Chanson de Geste
by LVDB
Summary: Edmund's memoirs reveal a darker Narnia than the one Professor Lewis described...
1. Prologue: Edmund

**Prologue: Edmund**

Once upon a time, four siblings ruled the magical kingdom of Narnia.

That's what the old stories say, and they're true—as far as they go. Allow me to expand picture a bit.

Once upon a time, Aslan gave absolute power to four unprepared, terrified children. Their new kingdom was named Narnia: they conquered it by killing the previous queen, Jadis. Narnia was a magical kingdom; centaurs trooped through its forests and nymphs danced in its glades at twilight. Narnia was a _medieval_ kingdom; its scarce human population huddled together in enclaves on its periphery. Jadis's winter had driven them to the borders of the Southern March and the islands of the East.

Life expectancy was low. Half of them died before their twentieth birthdays—from famine, disease, and childbirth. The survivors lived a reasonably happy existence in villages that rarely contained more than three hundred souls. They told stories and riddles, feasted at Christmas, danced around the maypole on Beltane, and fasted during the hungry gap in early spring. The adventurous ones traveled in pilgrimages to the Stone Table or the Lantern Waste, where the first king and queen had been crowned. At the end of their journeys, most settled down in the same villages where they were born, married their childhood sweethearts, and were buried in the same graveyards that held their great-great-ancestors unto the fiftieth generation. Over time, this habit had given each village's population a certain look, as the same families' children married each other again and again. In her fiefdom near Archenland, Susan could tell a man's place of origin by looking at him. I never acquired the knack.

This was the Narnia I remember. This was the land I ruled with my brother and sisters. And if it seems a bit different from the stories we told the man who Lucy always called "Dear Professor L.", well…my youngest sister probably put it best:

"We _mustn't_ tell him, Ed. He'd think it was simply _horrid_."

I never agreed with her, by the way. At its worst, Narnia could be a nightmare. Yet something kept us there all those years. We grew up under Cair Paravel's arched marble ceilings. We chased each other between its tapestries, and called it home. As I write this from the safety of our air-conditioned house, Peter stares out the window. His hand moves in abbreviated staccato sweeps, reliving some battle or other in the wild lands of the North. Lucy still wakes up sometimes and peers eagerly at the night sky in search of Narnia's second moon. She hasn't found it yet.

She will soon enough. Years ago—I can't tell you how many, since 'years' is a relative term when you've spent your life in two worlds—I saw Narnia's doomsday. The Calormenes will sweep into our kingdom from the south. As Tash's armies spread across Narnia, the Lion whisk us away to play our part in the final drama. Our earthly bodies will die in a train wreck. Our souls will remain in Narnia.

I know all of this because Jadis showed me. That is the subject of my story--or at any rate, one of its subjects. Narnia was always complicated.


	2. Chapter 1: Jadis

**Chapter 1: Jadis**

My father named her Linshiol, and she was a fool.

Of all my sisters, I liked her best. We met at the Purging of Forlois, where my father had brought me to watch rebel princes die. Linshiol had come from the same reason, along with twenty seven of my other sisters. I was ten years old, and she was about the same.

That day, my father brought the first hundred noblemen to his camp. Wretched creatures they were—some wept, some begged, some looked down and said nothing. My father put his hand on my shoulder and laughed at the dirt that crusted their torn robes, their muddy silks and satins. He hanged them; their bodies twitched at the ends of nooses, silhouetted against Charn's red sky.

They were the lucky ones.

When day had turned to night, I lay on the grass and stared into the sky. I was looking for the constellations that were so important for astral magic—Diueliz the Axeman; Ispariz the Wraith; Kirzinthio the Seer.

Linshiol joined me, and asked me where Vanix was.

"The love goddess?" I said.

When she nodded, I pointed to the circle of stars in the House of Leo. (Oh, the irony…)

She thanked me.

"Why Vanix?" I asked. "A crush?"

She laughed, and her hands played around her mouth in a way that told me I'd guessed correctly.

"The captain of father's guards," she said.

"Jur?"

"Yes."

"Ah," I said. "Good choice."

My sister was always forthright, you see--which is part of what made her a fool. That night, we found out that we had much in common. Our mothers bore us weeks apart; both of us hated our brothers. Our names also had the same numerical value in the Charnian alphabet. Fate had a sense of humor.

"Father can be cruel," she said after a while.

"I guess so…"

True--we said these things. But in our innermost minds we thought something else: _Reasons of State_. A thousand thousand years ago, these words buried themselves in the wombs of the House of Charn. If I ever had a child, she would have deposed me and laughed in my face for letting her do it. But I didn't, and never will.

Linshiol and I met several times after that. We played the games that Charnian princesses played: phantom battles and political duels with the shadows of old kings. I won the latter; she won the former. We invented a language and sometimes finished each other's sentences in it—it had ten words for cake, but none for 'throne' or 'crown'. Now it has the same number of speakers that Charnian does: One.

Or none, if you count me as dead…which I am, more or less.

We kept in touch throughout our childhoods. When my father killed the boy I loved, I cried on Linshiol's shoulder. I'd bewitched the boy, and tried to tell my father so, but it hadn't mattered: I was fourteen, and father was always protective of the bloodline. A year later, Linshiol sent me a painting of her first suitor. I approved, and said as much. It didn't work out.

We cried again before our teachers took us away for the ritual of assumption, when we sold our souls to Tash. That night, we left behind the cheap spells of little girls and entered the magic of Charn's royal house. On the evening after the ritual, we met again. We gazed at the stars like we had when we were little girls, but something was different this time. Linshiol seemed older, and I must have seemed that way to her, too. We lay on the grass again, and reminisced about the first time we'd prepared spiced wine and gotten drunk.

Our father died that night.

Nine years later, our armies fought the last battle that Charn would ever see. On a plain whose corpses have rotted eons ago, I spoke the Deplorable Word and killed everyone in the world. The look on my sister's face was…unforgettable.

I have no regrets.

* * *

Narnia.

Christmas had come to my former castle—a final insult. Worse, celebrations would continue in a parade of holy days until Candlemas: the Feast of Saint Stephen tomorrow, then Childermas after that, when churchmen wore masks and sang dirty songs....

And Christmas itself?

Angel's Mass, Shepherd's Mass, and the Day Mass had all finished. A banquet had begun downstairs. Revelers stuffed themselves with fish, birds, and pudding while I imagined the salty tang of the Yule Boar wafting through the halls, though I could no longer smell it.

I descended the steps. Why, I'm not sure.

Someone was playing a lute; the notes scratched against the castle walls, but didn't penetrate them. That, at least, gave me some comfort. In the firelight, grotesque shadows lurked on the ceiling as costumed revelers made fools of themselves. Partygoers spun in a carol dance. A girl with hair like honey twirled in the center of the ring; holly and ivy crowned her hair. The younger one, I think. She chanted verses, and the chorus responded.

Lucy? Yes. And fifteen now, a young woman. Had they been away so long?

Servants and peasants sat at their own table, where they gobbled goosemeat and slopped beer. Scum. They didn't belong among my Gothic arches and granite walls, muddying my carpets and tossing bones beneath my tapestries.

Another girl joined Lucy. This one wore her black hair braided, and she was older. She smiled too much. Lucy's sister, no doubt; her blood tasted of kinship. Susan grinned to a dark-haired boy at the table. Calormene, by the look of him. He was digging his spoon into a cake, although six uneaten cakes already lay in crumbled pieces on his trencher.

Susan laughed.

"You won't find the bean _there_ Rabadash! Ed's already got it."

_Edmund?_

I followed Susan's eyes to a tall, thin young man who sat at the head of the table. I still recognized the boy. Edmund pushed his bean back and forth with all the happiness of an undertaker as he watched his sister dance. Rabadash gave him an ironic bow, which Edmund returned.

By now, the Yule log had filled the room with smoke. Someone banged at the door: the mummers had arrived, apparently. Nobles jumped from their seats and shouted their drunken approval. Jewels sparkled in their tunics. I sneered and ascended the winding staircase again. They couldn't see me unless I wished it, but I wouldn't take any chances.

But where was the fourth Pevensie--the older brute who'd killed my chief of secret police? And why—

_Ah. So that's it._

My castle stood at the entrance of the Northern Wastes. Peter must have been questing there—a punitive expedition, no doubt, where he'd kill a few of their warriors and burn a fortress or two. His siblings must have turned this place into Peter's logistical pivot. A magazine.

Interesting.

* * *

I returned to my former room. It was empty, although the servants had filled a copper bathtub in one corner. Steam rose, and little droplets gathered like sweat on the hunk of soap beside the tub—a mixture of olive oil, soda, and lime that cleaned better than you might expect. A look at the tub and washbasin confirmed my suspicions.

No perfume. No rose leaves. No servants. Hard soap rather than soft. A toothbrush rather than a hazel twig. And the final straw: a two-piece pair of scissors rather than the Narnian model that pulled out more hair than it cut.

Fortune had been kind indeed.

The door opened, and the young man staggered in, rubbing his eyes.

"Hello, Edmund," I said.

He stopped when he saw me, but his reflexes worked faster than his conscious mind. Before I said anything further, his hand shot to his belt and sent a dagger flying at me. It passed through my body and clattered on the floor.

"Glad to see that you remember me. Tell me, little prince: Did you ever build the road system we discussed while you were stuffing your face with Turkish Delight?"

Edmund's eyes grew wider. I could guess at the unpleasant memories running through his head, since I'd created most of them. While he stayed riveted in place, I whispered one of the few spells that I could still manage. A crevice opened in the wall. It revealed the last room in the universe that still bore the mark of Charn: my only concession to whimsy. I stepped inside and crooked my finger toward him.

"It's difficult to completely kill a queen of Charn, _King_ Edmund."

Then I sat down at an oak table that occupied most of the room and began arranging the pieces. Edmund found his voice. Nearly.

"What…How--?"

"I want to play a game," I said. "Care to join me?"


	3. Chapter 2: Jadis

**Chapter 2: Jadis**

I rolled a game piece in my palm, waiting for the game to start. It was copper—Vanix's metal—but a green crust had formed on it from years of disuse. The board itself was gold, and hadn't tarnished.

"I'm waiting," I said.

Edmund turned to go. I spoke a word that slammed the door and fastened its wooden bar. Pathetic, really—in Charn, I could have reduced it to powder.

"Afraid?" I said.

He obviously was, but pretended to ignore me. His eyes darted around the room, shoulders rising and falling as he breathed too shallowly. I remembered a younger Edmund cowering before my throne, and smiled at the memory.

There the similarity ended. The sniveling ten year old from our first encounter would have stood gawking at me, too terrified to move. This incarnation was already edging toward the sword rack.

…As if I wouldn't notice.

"Go ahead," I said. "It can't hurt me anyway."

I swept my arm toward it: an invitation. When Edmund lunged for one particular blade, I didn't stop him. I laughed.

"Clever, Edmund…but no. Not even Nicholas's sword can harm me."

He smiled—very slightly, subtly—and I realized that I'd made a mistake. Magical swords have multiple uses.

_CHORP!_

The door's bar thumped on the ground, neatly bisected.

* * *

Edmund walked through the halls in long strides, eyes straight ahead. I floated alongside him.

"I know why you're afraid," I said.

He quickened his pace. We passed a tapestry with winged bulls and a lion that looked more like a frog. Green nymphs rose from the water to support him on their hands, while in the center, a white face cowled with equally white hair frowned.

I leaned close to Edmund's ear.

"Traitor," I whispered.

He lost half a step. I grinned and materialized a snake that curled around my arm. We spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone as Edmund walked.

"He can't resist temptation, and he knows it," I said.

The snake gave Edmund an appraising glance.

"He's weak," it hissed.

I nodded sagely.

"I'm afraid so," I said. "Now that Aslan isn't holding his hand…"

Edmund glared at me. Progress.

"Aslan's always there," he said. "_Always_."

I only replied with a smirk. The snake said something. I brought it closer.

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't quite catch that."

It grumbled a little and repeated itself.

"It's strange that Aslan crowned a man who's still afraid he'll throw his own siblings to the wolves," it said.

Edmund rounded a corner too quickly for me to see his expression. He was almost running now. I nearly lost him on the steps, but my ability to walk through walls served me well. He threw open an oak door and we emerged into the sunlight.

"This doesn't bother me, you know. I'm not a vampire…"

I saw a chapel in the middle of an enclosed garden. Ah. So _that_ was it, then…

"Come now, Edmund. You don't think you can _exorcise_ me, do you?"

* * *

The next few days were irritating. Monks blundered around my room with incense, so I spent most of my time wandering through my former palace. I've already mentioned the garden, and perhaps you think that the Pevensies added it after they killed me.

That isn't entirely true.

Some things looked familiar: It was still square, and the Pevensies had kept my stone desk at its center (though not my books, unfortunately). On the other hand, Edmund and his siblings had removed much from my little garden, including the spell that I'd used to guard it from Narnia's eternal winter.

The bitter wormwoods that reminded me of the _falschin_ herb from Charn had all died; someone had planted mugwart in their place. It could flavor wine, but little else. Every plant that my hags and wolves had scoured from Narnia's forests was gone. No poisons. No magical herbs. Worst of all, they had removed the purple jacinths that evoked Affa's wordplay in another garden, years ago.

…Oh, very well. I'll tell it:

* * *

_It's six months before I made my pact with Tash._

_I shiver, though it can't be from the warm night air. Affa coughs and asks if I'm ready to hear his poem. I respond by giggling—I'm young and stupid, you see. So is he. Fools write poetry; useless dupes like Affa waste their talents by building invisible palaces when they could be scheming for real ones._

_He's my age. I've known him for years. _

"_Sure," I say. "Why not?"_

_He has only ever read his poetry to me. I have time for it, and others don't--It's that easy, I guess. Despite this, I feel butterflies in my stomach, since Affa says that this poem is his best. His crowning work. For Linshiol. _

"_0 __orzchis __Linshiol…__"__ he begins._

_It's a poem in the old Charnian style—a mixture of our language and a tongue from a world in the scrying pool at Bramandin..._

_

* * *

  
_

…Mind you, it _was_ beautiful. The memory no longer makes my heart race, but I can still admit that--fool though he was--Affa arranged words incredibly well. I never had the talent.

In any event…

* * *

_...But this is the past, and I'm a young woman who still believes that words mean something more than scrawls on paper. As I listen to him, I imagine in that stupid, teenage way that he's baring his soul to me…and Linshiol, of course; his betrothed. At one point in the narration, I want to rest my head on his shoulder and melt. He has such lovely green eyes._

_Tash be praised: we're only young once._

_The poem ends, and he looks at me with a silly smile on his face. He fiddles with his fingers._

"_So…um…"_

"_Wonderful!" I say._

_He's startled by the glowing review, and I nearly laugh—at myself for my emotion, and at him for his bashfulness. _

"_You like it?" he says._

_He seems shocked._

"_Yes," I say, and hug him. _

_It's only friendly hug, but that's the way of the world. He stands up straighter. I smile at his burst of confidence, and engage in a bit of make-believe: Maybe, unlike __my__ first romance, Linshiol and Affa's will end happily._

_It's a silly idea, of course. Charn isn't Narnia._

_

* * *

  
_

…But I digress.

For over a week, monks bustled through the corridors in their hopeless attempt to drive me out. At all hours of the night, men with woolen robes and bags under their eyes seemed to be everywhere. They spoke to one another in an odd sign language that interested me until I deciphered it. By the third day, I wanted to cut their fingers off.

I retaliated by sending Edmund nightmares—mostly flashbacks of what I'd done to him when I wanted to know where his brother and sisters were. He stopped sleeping .

On the fourth day, I strolled through the forest that adjoined the castle and found Susan there with a young man whose blood smelled of the Islands. They didn't see me, and I didn't announce myself. I couldn't.

I discovered the boy's name on the fifth day, when I read through Edmund's correspondence. He found me reading it and took the parchment away, but I had already found what I needed. The boy was called Fyren, and I'd guessed correctly—he came from the Lone Islands, which lay off the coast of Calormen. His father called himself the "governor" of the Islands, but the title was nominal since neither I nor the Pevensies had ever extended our official reach that far. "King" would have been more accurate.

A political match, perhaps...But who was making it?

The twelfth day came and went, and I was still standing. When Edmund confronted me that night, he looked more exhausted than the monks. His eyelids drooped and shoulders slumped as he spoke. Still proud, though….his voice didn't waver when his bloodshot eyes met mine.

"Aslan'll deal with you," he said.

His voice was a bit slurred.

"Aslan lives with the Emperor-Over-The Sea," I replied. "He left Narnia to you because he doesn't care about it anymore."

I noticed his hand on the table; he seemed to be using it for support.

"You're alone," I said.

"I propose a deal," he said.

I sat back in the chair and watched him through steepled fingers.

"Go on."

"If I beat you at your game, you'll leave for whatever unpleasant afterlife Charnians go to," he said.

"Easy enough—"

"You'll swear it on the Deep Magic," he added.

If I was a weakling like the Pevensies, that prospect would have frightened me. Queens of Charn, however, are not easy to frighten.

"And if I win?" I asked.

"We play another game."

I laughed at him.

"So we keep playing until I lose? You _must_ be joking, King Edmund."

For the first time in days, he smiled and sat down next to me.

"Nobody can see you," he said. "Who else do you have to play with?"

I considered striking him for that, but it would have taken too much energy. Inflicting a week of nightmares had drained most of my reserves, but fortunately, he didn't know that.

I smiled back.

"You're cleverer than I remember," I said.

"You'll let me sleep?"

"Yes," I said. "There's no challenge otherwise."

He nodded.

"What's the game?" he said. "Chess?"

"I'll tell you tomorrow," I replied.

Edmund rose without another word and trudged toward the door. He took three steps before he collapsed on the rug.

"Until tomorrow, Edmund," I said.


	4. Chapter 3: Edmund

**Chapter 3: Edmund**

"You okay, Ed?"

I looked up. Lucy eyed my uneaten pie expectantly, tapping her knife on the trencher.

Oh, right. Breakfast…

The pantler must have come and gone, since bread and butter sat in the center of the tablecloth…along with a piece on my end that I must have buttered. We ate breakfast alone that day—an oddity, but our nobles tolerated it occasionally. Aslan's anointed monarchs get certain privileges.

"I'm not terribly hungry," I said.

Lucy bit her lip.

"It isn't—?"

"No," I said. "She's gone."

Her eyes narrowed as she leaned forward.

"You're _sure_?" she said.

"Don't be an idiot, Lu. D'you think I'd…"

Too late, I realized that I was being rude and held up my hand in a sort of apologetic wave.

"Sorry," I said.

Lucy smiled.

"You just had your first good sleep in days," she said. "Don't worry about it."

Then she gave me a mock-stern expression and pointed her finger at my plate.

"Now eat up!" she said.

I said "okay, mum," or something equally stupid and took a bite. It was herring pie that our cooks had flavored with pepper, ginger and cinnamon, and it tasted quite good. To this day, I think of Narnian cooking when our mother boils cinnamon during Christmastime.

"About Susan…" I said.

Lucy knocked the wine pitcher over. No matter—Narnians couldn't preserve it anyway, so it wasn't as if vintages mattered. Besides, a little wine was a small price to pay for one less aggravation. As the servants mopped up the mess, Lucy's expression became guarded.

"What about Susan?" she said, a little too quickly.

"What about _Fyren_?" I replied.

She frowned.

"Who told you?"

"Walls have ears, Lu."

She responded by fussily brushing crumbs to the center of the table.

"So do _spies_," she snapped.

"As chief of Peter's intelligence service, it's my duty—"

She held up a hand.

"Spare me your excuses," she said.

Lucy crushed a hunk of salt with her goblet and sprinkled the crumbs on her pie. One of them was large enough that it crunched when she bit it. Her face puckered slightly.

"It's a matter of state security," I said.

"It's _snooping_."

"It's—"

"Snooping," she said. "Pure, shameless snooping. Aslan would be horrified."

I doubted it. Then again, Lucy always expected more from the Lion than I did. Aslan hadn't won Narnia back from the Witch without…cracking a few eggs, let's say.

"Besides," she said. "They're getting married."

Two thoughts immediately leaped to mind. First, Fyren should keep his hands off my sister. He was nice enough, I guess, but Susan deserved better—flighty though she occasionally was. Second…

…Well, I'm not proud of my second reason.

"Bad idea," I said.

"Why?"

Lucy's tone told me that she knew _exactly_ why, but she didn't like it.

"We can't afford to protect the Lone Islands," I said.

She sniffed and flicked her silver goblet.

"Protect Fyren's claim to the throne, you mean."

"Same thing," I said. "Calormen prefers his brother, and so did we until he arrived in Caer Paravel."

"The operative words being—"

"And what would Rabadash think?" I continued. "The Tisroc sent him as an envoy to negotiate a settlement, remember? How d'you think he'd respond if I told him, 'Sorry chum, but we're freezing you out of the Islands'?"

"Your sister _cares_ about him!"

"My sister might be starting a _war_ over him," I replied.

The words hit her like a blow. Her eyes widened.

"It's _that_ serious?" she said.

"Might be….Anyway, I don't want to risk one on a whim. Make sure that Susan's serious before I talk to Rabadash."

Lucy nodded and rose from the table.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't—"

"I know," I said. "Me neither."

She patted me on the shoulder and turned to go. As her footsteps disappeared down the hall, I felt arms wind around my neck.

"Not as easy as you thought, is it?" Jadis said.

* * *

I didn't know what to expect from Jadis' "game". If I had to guess, I would have guessed something like chess, except with an unpleasant twist or two—painful shocks for making the wrong move, or something like that.

The folds of her dress swished as she crossed her legs and sat back. She drummed her fingers on the armrests.

"Tell me, Edmund: What did you think of my reign?" she asked.

"Just set up the game," I said.

"This is part of the game."

I considered getting up and leaving, but decided against it: This might be going somewhere. I also resisted the temptation to tell Jadis that she'd been a brutal lunatic—she just would have laughed at that.

"You were incompetent," I said.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Oh?"

I gestured at the walls around us.

"This castle," I said. "You built it to protect yourself from your subjects, didn't you?"

"Of course."

"Because they hated you."

Jadis rested her head on her palm, so that her fingers covered her mouth. Those eyes… an odd black-on-black, so I couldn't see the pupils. They flicked from my face to the board

"Ours is a high and lonely destiny," she said.

Jadis repeated it like a proverb. For all I knew, it was.

"I didn't say lonely. I said _hated_. When your people hate you, all the fortresses in the world can't save you," I said.

A smirk appeared behind her hand.

"It worked for a century," she said.

"…Until your subjects decided that they'd rather support _four_ _kids_ instead of you," I said.

Jadis's smirk disintegrated, and she sat up straighter.

"You had Aslan," she said.

"Even _without_ Aslan, we could have done a lot of damage," I replied. "And you know it."

_Then_ she laughed. It was a deep, liquid sound that brought back memories I'd rather not discuss right now.

"_You_ wouldn't have done any damage, Edmund," she said. "You would have died on the Stone Table, and I would have crushed your brother's army afterward."

I took a breath and reminded myself to stay calm.

"…And killed how much of your army in the process?" I shot back.

Jadis shrugged.

"Pawns," she said. "Nothing more."

"Pawns that you would have needed to keep the Telmarines out," I said. "Telmar would have destroyed you after you beat us. _If_ you beat us."

She started to say something, but stopped. I stood up.

"If that's the game, I think—"

"Sit," she said.

Jadis muttered something that sounded like a cross between German and Latin with too many z's. A mahogany box appeared. I immediately noticed the latch—it was shaped like a brass gargoyle, and winked at me. Inside, the pieces nestled into recesses made of green felt. I recognized a few from the temple of Tash in Calormen: alchemical symbols for quartz, copper and mercury; each carved from their respective elements. Some moved. They looked like writhing bugs.

"If you think that _this_ is impressive, you should have seen my homunculi," she said. "In any event, I know where to begin…."

She placed a game piece on the table, and the world melted.

* * *

What came next is difficult to describe, but I'll try. I became Kulzphazur, Seventh King of Charn. I remembered the names of each of my provinces, and that my ancestors had won them through a combination of cunning and bravery—Dosig, Etharzi, Graa and the rest. On my eastern border lay the Ilonon Ialpor: the Branches of Flame, the sacred river of fire. And to the West…

My target. It was called Limlal, and the House of Raasy ruled it. It had red earth.

At the same time, I knew that I was Edmund, and that this was a game. I also knew that Jadis ruled Limlal; she had taken the House of Raasy's role. I felt parts of myself missing.

_They're not missing_, her voice said.

_Jadis?_ I thought.

_Yes. I'm here. The parts of your consciousness aren't missing, just extended. Follow their threads._

_Follow their what? How do I…Oh._

I let my consciousness drift, and found them. I realized that I could see through a hundred people's eyes and read their thoughts—counselors, generals, priests—but I couldn't control them completely. The best analogy I can give is this: Imagine a puppet show where the puppets can tug back on the strings if they don't like where the puppeteer leads them.

_That's…weird,_ I thought.

_You'll get used to it. Shall we begin?_

The world sped up. Thoughts and events flooded into my mind much faster than I could filter them. When I figured out how to sift through the mess, Jadis had already fortified Limlal.

Okay, then…

I marched westward. Our armies fought at the Ford of Toh, and seven of my "pawns" died commanding the final charge that broke Jadis's ranks. Bits of my consciousness returned to me again. As their minds switched off, it felt like I'd forgotten something—like a word on the tip of your tongue that you can't remember.

Jadis withdrew. I issued strict orders to respect local property, and few of my men looted anything. We marched through olive groves and baked in dry heat reflected from white rocks. When local nobles met us, I presented them with gifts of silk and gold and asked how many of their sons the House of Raasy had executed.

Jadis sat behind her walls and waited.

I struck at dawn. By the time our trumpets blasted, Limlal's inhabitants had already deserted Jadis. They opened the gates. By nightfall, Jadis had fled and the city had grown quiet.

_Well?_ I thought. _How's that?_

_You'll see._

_But—_

_Keep playing, Edmund._

I enjoyed banquets with Limlal's nobles while Jadis retreated to the House of Raasy's other dominions and threatened Charn from the north. Raiders probed our defenses in the cold mountains around Etharzi, so I gathered my army and headed to meet her. We met in a gorge, with heavy losses on both sides. When winter came, we settled in.

Limlal rebelled.

Before Jadis's supporters regained control, I sent a flying column to stop them. Snowstorms buried it. A token force arrived at the Ford of Toh, where Limlal's soldiers cut them down. For the remainder of the winter, Jadis purged anyone who had supported me.

Spring came. Felinda entered the war from the south, hungry for plunder. I staged a forced march that barely reached Charn in time. The Felindans sued for peace outside my own city gates.

By then, I'd lost most of my army, and Jadis descended from the north. Everywhere she went, she deported my people—well, _her_ people, technically—and installed colonies from the House of Raasy's ancestral lands. The disinherited victims became poor and scattered; the rest obeyed because they feared for their own property. Etharzi fell.

I tried to recapture it, and caught a crossbow bolt to the chest while leading an attack. A more prudent son succeeded me. He signed a treaty with Jadis that reduced Charn to a vassal state.

Jadis laughed.

_And that's checkmate._

* * *

I blinked. The pieces had already returned to their box, and shaft of sunlight fell on the table from a window above us. I could see the garden through the glass. Jadis passed her hands over the box, and it vanished as if an eraser had swept it from a chalkboard.

"Not bad for your first time," she said. "Better than most other seventeen-year-olds, anyway…"

"You stacked the deck against me."

She assumed a fake 'pained' expression.

"I swear on the Deep Magic that I didn't."

"The rebellion—"

"An outgrowth of your own stupid policies," she said. "People are fickle. As soon as they realized that you couldn't give them what they wanted, Limlal's nobles joined me again."

Jadis began ticking off points on her fingers, one by one.

"If you'd purged them as I did, or set up colonies as I did, or even stayed there yourself instead of meeting me in the north…"

She smiled.

"…but you didn't," she said.

Jadis lay back in her chair in a movement that reminded me of a cat stretching—right down to the way her fingers curled. She tilted her head to one side, tapping a fingernail on her cheek.

"So…tell me about your problem with Susan," she said.

I scooted my chair out and left without another word.

"Same time tomorrow," she called after me.


	5. Chapter 4: Jadis

**Chapter 4: Jadis**

"_Hey," she says. _

_Jadis hesitates at the door, her foot dangling at the border between the rooms. Affa pokes his head out from behind a mahogany trunk. _

_ "Hey," he says. "Come in."_

_ I hesitate. Or Jadis does. A younger me. _

_ She hears Linshiol's boots tapping their way down the spiral stairway, who grins when she sees her sister at the threshold. When she reaches the ground floor, Linshiol scampers among the boxes, muttering about how this thing or that thing needs to be packed. After each order, Affa sighs and dumps the luggage into its designated trunk._

_ " Sorry," Linshiol says. "Almost finished here."_

_ Jadis closes the door behind her and removes her ceremonial cloak. No need for it here. I watch her bask in the Charnian winter air that I haven't felt in centuries. Linshiol tosses her a bottle and glass, which she catches with that effortless grace that marked the Royal House until its last member drew her last breath. _

_ We drink. Sorry…__they__ drink. I watch. It's one of those deep red wines from Linshiol's vineyards, where the charred remnants of Bramandin's homes and people still lie beneath the fields. The grape vines grow thickly there. The liquid dyes our lips red. Time for goodbyes._

_ I feel a hand on my shoulder. Then three more hands. The usual stench reaches my nostrils a moment later._

"_Walking down memory lane?" he asks._

_ I try not to look surprised._

_ "A record of past mistakes," I say. _

_ Tash clicks his beak. The talons pierce my shoulder as he laughs. Jadis and Linshiol have finished their wine and have started to pack. _

_ "Isn't that a little tight?" Jadis asks._

_ "Nah, they won't wrinkle," Linshiol says._

_ My doppelganger raises an eyebrow. _

_ "No, seriously," my sister says. "I read it in Tiro's Natural History."_

_ Jadis smirks._

_ "What…you mean the same book that talks about centaurs and unicorns?"_

_Linshiol drops a pair of shoes into a wicker basket, arms folded across her chest. She sticks her chin out—an unladylike gesture that always took me off guard when we argued. She's joking now, though._

_ "So?"_

_ "So they don't exist," I say._

_She rolls her eyes and I roll mine. It will take me centuries to figure out that she won the argument. _

_ "A sisters' tiff before parting ways," Tash says. "How touching."_

_ I start making passes in the air that will disperse the vision. He catches my hand._

_ "What does it matter to you?" I snap."You didn't care when I was __alive__!" _

_ "Neither did you."_

_Jadis and Linshiol are hugging each other and crying. I remember the mantras that were running through my mind: She won't leave until tomorrow…I'll still have the stories she wrote for me….It's not like she'll be gone __forever__._

_Tash snaps his fingers, and I see my sister and Affa disintegrate. Their skin rots to the bone, and their bones turn to powder. The background fades behind us, but the skulls remain floating in space until another background appears: the Last Battlefield. Affa and Linshiol's skeletons take their places in the piles of corpses that had once been their army. (And mine, too, I suppose. Peasants are hard to tell apart.)_

_The sky seems so dark…_

"_What do you want?" I say._

_Tash leans closer. His eyes are orange, lidless and unblinking, like a fish's. They'd always struck me as grotesque: they suggested animal-like stupidity, and Tash was anything but stupid._

"_Nothing yet," he says. "But keep me updated on your 'games'."_

"_You're planning something?"_

"_Nothing I'll tell you about."_

_I shrug. The movement is involuntary, and I immediately regret it when Tash's talons are driven in more deeply. I pretend not to notice._

"_I'll figure it out eventually," I say._

"_I'm sure you will," he says. "You were always a clever girl."_

_The talons release. I can't suppress an exhalation of relief, much as I try. The specter bows and vanishes, leaving me alone with the wreckage of Charn's armies. I dissolve the vision._

"_Not clever enough," I mutter. _

_

* * *

  
_

Catastrophes often have small beginnings.

Shameless flirt that she was, Susan had developed an interest in Fyren. Personally, I would have taken him as a lover and discarded him when I got bored, but Susan was an idiot. She wanted marriage. A problem? Not necessarily.

Fyren's father ruled the Lone Islands. He'd died under suspicious circumstances. His other sons had accused Fyren and exiled him to Narnia. Still not a problem.

Yet.

Now consider the Lone Islands. For ages, humans had sat on those grubby little rocks and done pretty much what they pleased. This wasn't a pack of animals who'd bow to any idiot that Aslan shook his tail at. Oh, they _claimed_ to be loyal Narnian subjects, but I doubted that they did much more than pay a little bit of tribute here and there. After all, they hadn't paid _me_, and I was much more brutal in my debt collection than the pack of teenagers who ruled Cair Paravel.

Edmund was more pragmatic than I'd expected: he preferred _some_ control over the Lone Islands to none, and realized that anything more permanent would require long-term occupation. But Susan _loved_ Fyren to the depths of her shallow little heart…

You can see the problem.

It might have blown over if Fyren hadn't been so well-connected. While the Pevensies used my castle as a supply depot for Peter's army in the north, the bishops had convened a synod at Cair Paravel. Fyren had played with two of them as a boy, and wrote letters to the rest. When the smoke cleared, the synod had decided that Narnia's rulers needed to solve two problems:

1) Slavery

2) Witchcraft

…Both of which had been perfectly legal during _my_ reign, thank you very much. Coincidentally, the Lone Islands sold more slaves than the rest of Narnia combined, and both of Fyren's brothers were Tash worshippers.

The report from Cair Paravel arrived on Thursday morning. The explosion came on Friday night.

Dinner started uneventfully enough. The dwarves had prepared a special blancmange--a sugary paste of chicken and rice in almond milk garnished with fried almonds that must have tasted much better than its sounds, since the guests stuffed it down their throats faster than the dwarves brought it out. The wine looked a little thick; I saw a few men sifting it through their teeth. I imagined Linshiol turning up her nose at the sight—not because it was disgusting, but because of the vintner's incompetence. My sister always took wine so seriously…

Naiads and dryads danced in the center while a troubadour sang the _Chanson de Roland _from a stone alcove above us. The Narnian nobles ignored him. Fools. If Edmund was as clever as he seemed, the man was listening to their conversations and reporting back to him. A faun trotted past me with a steaming pile of lampreys in a wooden bowl rimmed with silver. He shivered as he passed me. The human that he was serving put a few lampreys onto the piece of day-old bread that he used as a plate and waved the faun off.

I'd never seen a servant scamper away so quickly.

A man in a blue felt jacket with golden stars woven into the fabric tossed the remains of a meat pie to the dogs. The movement seemed oddly deliberate, as if he was testing something. When the dogs started bickering over who had the right to the bone, the man tapped his neighbor's shoulder and subtly rolled his head toward the scene.

Interesting. The Pevensies had filled the place to the brim with talking animals, and the assembled noblemen seemed uneasy about it.

"_Much_ cleverer than I thought..."

I made a mental note to bring it up at my next game with Edmund. Watching his conscience squirm at its own hypocrisy would be entertaining.

Not quite as entertaining as what happened next, though.

In the course of ten or twelve seconds, the room fell silent as the diners noticed Queen Susan standing with Fyren, goblet upraised. Edmund's eyes widened when he saw them. He gripped his trencher until a corner crumbled. When he silently mouthed 'no', Susan pretended to ignore him. Lucy's eyes snapped back and forth between her brother and sister. When Lucy cleared her throat, Susan cut her off before she could say anything.

"Assembled Narnians: Today, we have received news from the synod at Cair Paravel. We all know its recommendations by now, and I can think of no better opportunity for setting right _certain abuses _in the Lone Islands…"

Edmund's chair squealed on the floor as he bolted upright.

"Susan, that's enough. First off, we don't exactly know if there _are_ any 'abuses', and second—"

"Exactly!" Susan said. "…Which is why I sent the _Splendor Hyaline _early this morning."

Rabadash sat back, twiddling his thumbs and smiling. Edmund turned pale.

"What. Orders. Did. You. Give?"

Susan tightened her jaw and tried her best to glare back at him.

"And I quote: 'The _Splendor Hyaline_ will rendezvous with the rest of the Narnian fleet and sail immediately for the Lone Islands, where it will ascertain the existence and extent of the slave trade and the practice of Calormene witchcraft among the inhabitants. If it discovers sufficient grounds for the removal of the hereditary governor by the terms laid down by the Cair Paravel synod, it will take such measures as are necessary to secure the governor and his family pending the judgment of all four kings and queens…'"

The rest of her speech was lost in the uproar that followed.

I laughed.


	6. Chapter 5: Edmund

**Chapter 5: Edmund**

Maybe I was finally getting the hang of this.

I rifled through my memories and discovered that I was Grand Duke Peueriz and that, contrary to all logic, I could actually pronounce my name. I aspired to the Throne of Charn, and I had the family connections that might just pull it off. Old King Limzkil had already descended into dotage. Duke Peueriz fantasized about poisoning the king's boiled porridge, and felt a predatory thrill at the image of Limzkil gagging after he'd sucked it through his few remaining teeth.

_Jadis?_

_What?_

_This is making me sick._

_What's the matter, Edmund? Isn't your new palace up to Caer Paravel's standards? _

_I was referring to the Duke._

She laughed.

Okay…so I was supposed to overthrow Limzkil. That was obvious enough. After reassuring myself that it was just a game and that I wouldn't _actually _be hurting the old man, I reviewed my family members. Two people caught my attention: a soldier named Zunzial and an unpronounceable nephew named Hilzscifriz. His parents had died early. I'd adopted him. The germs of a strategy formed in my mind.

_Ready?_

_Ready_, I replied.

As soon as time started, I gave my nephew an apprenticeship under Zunzial. With luck, he'd make a good soldier in a few years. I paid my taxes to Limzkil, beat off attacks from my neighbors, and waited.

Countess Maiz died. I was her nephew…I think. Charnian family trees wound around themselves like thickets. In any event, I haggled for all I was worth and netted thousands of acres of farmland. When Duke Sonziz threatened my new dominions, I sent in Zunzial and twenty thousand men. My nephew/adopted son Hilzscifriz proved a daring horseman. Zunzial routed the enemy, took _more_ land, and promptly died of malaria.

Now what?

_Think f-a-a-a-s-t Edmund_, Jadis purred.

Okay, no problem. Obligations traveled in weird directions in Charnian families—mostly through the mother's brother and father's sister—so I was pretty sure that my younger brother owed Hilzscifriz a favor. Sure enough, he found work for Hilzscifriz as a mercenary. In a few years, the kid had turned into one of the best generals in Charn.

King Limzkil had a stroke. The nobles were mobilizing now. In two weeks, three of the four Grand Electors died from poison. My assumed persona practically screamed at me to join the assassination-go-round. I refused. Instead, I mustered my armies and waited until the nobility exterminated itself. I wouldn't contribute to it, but I wouldn't stop it either.

In the meantime, I did something very rare for a Charnian ruler: I started planning for the future. After all, I wouldn't live forever. I sent Hilzscifriz through my domains to inspect his future inheritance and familiarize himself with the laws. He learned quickly and had a natural instinct for public relations. When Hilzscifriz staged a hundred-horse parade in the town of Chorzta, its inhabitants got a first look at their future duke. Good news, since Chorzta sat astride an important trade route.

On the same day that the fourth Grand Elector caught a stiletto in the back, I went to Chorzta myself. The violence was intensifying. If I died in the upcoming civil war, I needed to ensure a stable succession. If I made Hilzscifriz a temporary governor, he could easily step into my shoes if worst came to worst.

_Tsk-tsk. Wasting your time again, Edmund?_

_Hardly._

_We'll see._

Hilzscifriz held a banquet for me, inviting the town's most important citizens. I used the occasion to update everyone on the situation. My nephew seemed to understand, and recommended that everyone retire to a private room to plan our next move. As soon as we were seated, Hilzscifriz threw open the cellar door. Armed men swarmed in and slaughtered us like pigs.

_Checkmate! _

_

* * *

  
_

I opened my eyes. Jadis was hovering horizontally a few inches above the ground, as if she was lying on a sofa. She wore a long green dress with a high collar that came up to her chin and looked rather uncomfortable.

"Let me guess," I said. "You were playing as Hilzscifriz."

She grinned. Without the benefit of Grand Duke Peueriz's tongue, my pronunciation sounded like a sneeze.

"Afraid so," she said. "You're far too trusting."

For some reason, Jadis had insisted on playing in the garden. I'd agreed on the condition that no one saw us, and she'd grudgingly made the necessary arrangements—thereby revealing a concealment spell from her days as queen that I didn't know about. I would deal with it later.

I scanned the skyline. During Narnia's century-long winter, the Witch's castle and its surrounding village had seemed to sit on an endless icy plain. The plain remained, but the melting snow had revealed hills and a network of rivers that converged at the castle like a spider's web. If you looked closely, you could see fat barges floating up from Caer Paravel. A network of forts that dated from King Frank's time dotted the hills and formed the town's furthest limits. Jadis had added a wall between them, but it had cracked during the War and now wound between the rivers like a dismembered snake. I wondered if we could rebuild it.

"Edmund."

"Eh?"

"You're ignoring me."

We sat under a tunnel of interwoven trees. Vines threaded between the branches, and when the sunlight hit them, they filtered just enough light that the cobblestones took on a greenish tint. You could see a lawn through the gaps. Narnians don't cut their lawns short like we do; they mow them with scythes and dot them with periwinkles, primroses, and violets--which symbolize purity. Lucy used the garden for dances sometimes.

"I'm not in the mood for another lecture about the virtues of paranoia," I said.

Jadis sighed theatrically.

"Edmund....You're about to blunder into a war while your sister and her latest plaything sit around in Caer Paravel and make the beast with two backs. I think that a little paranoia might be just—"

"That's _enough_," I said.

She threw back her head and laughed.

"What?"

"Hahaha--My dear—a ha ha –My dear, foolish little king," she said. "You're playing around with countries when you still don't understand the first thing about _people_. I wouldn't be surprised if you thought your sister was still a virgin…."

"Don't you dare talk about—"

"You _do!"_ she said. "I didn't believe it at first, but then again…"

Jadis ran a fingernail over her lip and gave me an odd look, as if she'd discovered a piece that didn't quite fit. The grin returned.

"Are _you _still a virgin, Edmund?"

"That's none of your—"

"I thought so."

When I didn't reply, Jadis shrugged and began replacing the game pieces.

By now, my escorts had probably assembled in the courtyard. Their saddlebags would be jingling with silver coins that the city's burghers had contributed for a "war" that I still hoped to avoid. (It was the least they could do, really, since we rented them partial sovereignty over their city. Town air may make you free, but it doesn't come cheap.)

I just hoped that I could catch the fleet in time.

"I need to get going," I said.

She raised an eyebrow.

"That's it? You don't even want to know why you lost?"

"I lost because you behaved unrealistically," I said. "What kind of lunatic kills his own uncle because he's a little impatient?"

"I did something very similar during my own reign," she said.

"My point exactly."

When I turned to go, she scratched her nails on the board. It almost sounded like a person screaming.

"You _lost_," she said, "because you trusted someone you shouldn't have. You played by _rules_. Politics has no rules."

"Okay, then," I said. "What happened to Hilzscifriz after he killed me?"

She narrowed her eyes like a street vendor who's afraid of getting cheated.

"Why does _that _matter?"

"Answer the question."

Jadis waved her hand in an airy, dismissive motion.

"Oh, let's see…he killed the town magistrate and wiped out everyone who could threaten him. All at once, mind you: You should always deal with your enemies in a short, sharp shock. That's the key to—"

"When did he die?" I said.

She drummed her fingers in an odd _dr-r-r-rit_ rhythm on the gameboard, between the scoured marks from her nails. The board was whimpering.

"King Limzkil's successor had him strangled a year later," she said. "Why?"

I didn't answer. After a moment, she caught my drift and rolled her eyes.

"Come now, Edmund. You can't reduce a complicated situation like Limzkil's Succession into a cheap fable. Virtue and justice and all that nonsense don't win wars."

"Really?"

_Dr-r-r-it…._

"Now you're just being stubborn," she said. "Look at it this way: I'm the final product of Charn's politics. My family _won_, Edmund."

"And where's Charn now?"

"Another technicality."

It was my turn to roll my eyes. The sun had shifted, and the shadow from a long, vaulted-ceilinged building darkened the garden. Susan suspected that it had been a cathedral at one point, which meant that Jadis cannibalized its masonry when she'd built her castle around it. It must have been at least ten stories originally—not bad for a building designed by an illiterate craftsman.

"I'm coming with you, of course," Jadis said.

"Think again."'

Her lips tensed until they became a thin line on her pale face.

"I could always latch onto one of your sisters."

"No, you couldn't," I said. "I'm the only one with a connection. You said so yourself."

She screamed and knocked the board over. An ivory piece that looked like a stag shattered. I turned to go.

"Goodbye, Jadis," I said.

My boots ground into the gravel, and I let out a long sigh of relief…

"You could use my advice," she said.

"You must be joking."

A pause.

"_Please _let me come."

I stopped. For a moment, I thought I'd heard incorrectly. But no—her shoulders were tense, her eyes wider than usual. She was either afraid or an incredible actress, and I didn't believe that she was acting. Not because I trusted her, but because she had too much pride to beg. Unless...

…unless _what_? She hadn't been afraid of death even when she was alive. Boredom? Loneliness? Each seemed absurd. Then what?

"You wouldn't be able to come anyway," I said. "You're attached to the castle."

"Leave that to me," she said. "Just remember the game. I can't carry solid objects over long distances."

So she was attached to the _box_! Powerful artifacts are durable, but not indestructible....

"All right," I said. "I'll bring it."

And so, in my rush to get rid of Jadis, I forgot to ask myself what had scared her in the first place.


	7. Chapter 6: Jadis

**Chapter 6: Jadis**

I haven't shed tears for many people, and those I've mourned didn't deserve my grief. Iaida came closest, though.

Mind you, we'd never been close. True, we were sisters. True, I admired her–at first. I dressed like her, wore jewelry like hers, and tried to emulate her curly hair until I nearly burned my scalp with an ill-conceived scheme that involved hot wires.

I wasn't particularly bright at ten years old.

Iaida was born four years before me, and met my enthusiasm with indifference. Fourteen-year-old girls don't look kindly on clingy little sisters, and neither do their friends. I pretended to mirror her disdain, and after a while, the mask stuck. We ate meals together, lived together, and ignored each other completely.

Someone poisoned her a year later.

When I inherited her room and clothes, I found--much to my surprise--that I wasn't happy about it. The room seemed quiet. I cried that night and indulged in the usual self-pitying slop: how much time we'd wasted wrapped up in our own lives...how I hadn't hugged her before she died...and so on.

There's a saying in Charn that roughly translates to "better late than never."

* * *

"How much time do you have?" I asked.

Iaida shrugged. She appeared as she had on her death bed: pale, thin, and fifteen. Purple rings had formed around her eyes. The golden beads on her funerary robe clacked together as they swung on the tassels that hung from her waist. Her fingernails had grown long. Her curly hair had become gray and matted, and large hunks were missing.

"Not enough," she said. "You're lucky that Tash allowed this at all."

"Tash owed me a favor."

Iaida gave me a look that said, _Nonsense_. Odd. It looked so much like a child's expression now, and yet it had fixed itself in my mind a thousand years ago as the look of authority. The older sister's look. Knowing. Worldly-wise.

How old did I look to her now? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? Each had seemed unspeakably old at fifteen. I rubbed my wrists and wondered if this was a good idea after all.

Anvard appeared in the distance–a small city clustered behind red walls. Most houses congregated on its eastern end, although a few straggled along the riverbank to its west. The Anvard Minster dominated the skyline; its tallest spire rose two hundred feet above the winding, narrow streets. The sight drew attention away from Lune's fortress, which sat squat and beetle-like on a hill of dirt. Yet it had its own sophistications for those who cared: a network of trenches, moats, wards, and barbicans that could funnel attackers while Lune's archers shot them to pieces. You can probably guess which of the two buildings I admired more.

It wasn't yet dark enough to see the welcome lantern, but we heard the bell.

Iaida's eyes had drifted to Edmund. He rode a Narnian destrier–one of Aslan's special breeds, born from the union of Telmar's warhorses and kelpies from the Northern Wastes. They never tired. This was fortunate, since we had ridden through moors and woods for almost a week.

My sister jerked her head toward Edmund.

"One of your former–ah...?"

"Of course not," I said. "And don't say it like that. You make me sound like Siatri."

Iaida giggled. Her receding gums made her teeth seem longer and thinner than I remembered. She leaned forward confidentially, and I realized that I needed to crouch to put us face-to-face.

"Siatri's such a _slut_," she whispered.

For some reason, her unsubtle reply irked me.

"_Was _a slut," I said. "She's dead now."

Iaida tilted her head to one side.

"Oh?"

"Everyone's dead."

"As in...?"

"_Everyone_," I said.

Iaida's eyes widened. They had a strong yellowish tint, with thick red veins scrawled across them.

"The Deplorable–"

"Yes," I said.

"You?"

I laughed once, humorlessly.

"Who else?" I said.

To my surprise, Iaida smiled and gritted her teeth---a _kr-r-r-r-r-r-rit_ that reminded me of fingernails on slate.

"I'm glad," she said.

She must have mistaken my surprise for disapproval.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "If you knew about the place their poison sent me to, you'd–"

"I know!" I snapped. "Don't remind me."

Again, I saw Iaida's knowing look.

"You've been there too," she said.

It wasn't a question. I shut my eyes and I forced myself to exhale.

"Yes," I said. "I've been there."

"Sorry, little sister."

* * *

We passed through the northern gate. By now, I could see plumes of blue smoke wafting upward from the residential districts. Anvard was less an open town than a series of boxes: the Minster, the monasteries, the Hospital of Saint Agnes, and the castle each cordoned sections off with their walls. The townspeople referred to their streets as "gates", which should give you an idea. They resembled caves. Their narrowness blocked out most of the sunlight, which may have been a blessing in disguise, since Anvard's streets were an unpaved collection of mud and broken cobblestones that had shallow ditches rather than drains for the rainwater and refuse. The air felt thick. Stale.

The place reminded me of Forlois in my own world.

"Charming," I said.

Edmund didn't reply.

We emerged into the sunlight at an unusually broad street that I later learned served as a cattle market. The respite lasted until we crossed the River Col, which flowed through the center of town and accumulated whatever garbage the Archenlanders didn't throw into the streets.

Miracle of miracles, Edmund spared me a brief comment:

"Lots of timber buildings close together...Seems like a firetrap, doesn't it?"

"The eastern section burned down in 963," I replied.

"Hm."

* * *

Edmund met his counterpart in a dark hall. Its lower stone walls gave way to wood as they climbed. The windows contained more lead lining than glass, and chopped the sunlight into shadowy grids. Rushes lay on the ground.

A very young boy with blond hair sat next to Lune, and slid the rushes across the floor with wide, swinging kicks. The rhythm was irregular–almost as if he was twitching.

"He seems...enthusiastic," Edmund said.

Lune gave him a long-suffering smile and explained that Corin needed to understand politics early. Edmund nodded. When one of Lune's attendants threw peat on the fire, I could barely make out a wood panel above the fireplace where some workman had carved the Green Man.

"So..." Iaida said. "I think it's–"

"Yes," I said. "I suppose it's about time."

A small feast waited on the table between the two kings. Silver goblets and mazer bowls offered their contents to no avail. Corin hummed loudly.

A pause.

"Lune, perhaps it would be better if your son...er..."

Lune sighed.

"Right," he said. "Corin?"

The boy's head snapped toward Lune.

"Yes, Father?!?!"

"Go play."

While Corin dashed to the far side of hall and dodged between the wooden pillars, Edmund gave Lune an edited version of the events so far. If Archenland's fleet could carry him to the Lone Islands before the _Hyaline _arrived, he might avert war. If not...well, the King of Archenland was Susan's vassal because he held Pire. Edmund expected military support.

"He's smart," Iaida said.

"I told you as much," I replied.

Edmund and Lune rambled on, but it was pretty clear that Narnia would receive the support she demanded. Lune had no choice. Edmund hinted–though he never said it outright–that the Lone Islands' fleet would fall into Calormene hands if it split from Narnia. _Everyone _knew what that meant.

"Jadis?" Iaida said.

"Yes?"

"Why did you summon me?"

_Say it_, I thought. _Just say it all at once before you can stop yourself. Be done with it._

"Iaida, we...weren't close, exactly..."

She looked at nothing in particular on the far wall.

"No," she said. "No...I guess we weren't."

"Wait," I said. "What I meant..."

_Really, what's the use?_

I shook my head and waved her away. She didn't leave.

"I know," she said. "It's almost like we're home again."

"Yes."

An awkward hug followed. The hair on the back of her head fell off at my touch, and she smelled of death. Of Tash.

"Goodbye," I said.

Iaida faded.

Lune dipped his head and held his hands in front of his chest until Edmund clasped them with his own. Not an ordinary _commendatio_, perhaps, but this wasn't an ordinary situation.

"Well, you've seen her," Tash said.

I bowed deeply.

"And I thank you for it."

Tash brushed a claw across my face just softly enough that it didn't break the skin. I tried not to shudder. His throat gurgled. Laughter.

"You wonder why I allowed it," he said.

"I wouldn't dare to–"

"Ah, but you _would_," he said. "You wonder why I would bribe you now when I could threaten you instead. Especially when threats motivate you so well...I never thought I'd hear you say _please_..."

Tash turned his hand over and stroked my cheek. I felt oil from his plumage rub into my skin.

"All right," I said. "Why did you let me see Iaida?"

He clicked his beak and prodded me with his other claw.

"Because you'll be joining her soon," he said. "And because it _hurt_."


	8. Chapter 7: Edmund

**Chapter 7: Edmund**

Sunlight shone through the stained glass window and painted the stone green. The window stood perhaps fifteen feet high, and was framed by the cream-colored stone around it. In it, a man in a gray robe held out his hands to a crowd. The front ranks knelt before him, heads dipped. Noblemen, probably---they wore swords and the pointed shoes that the present generation of Felimath's courtiers had adopted from Narnia. Other men stood at the back of the crowd. They whispered to each other behind cupped hands. Fyren grinned

"The Conversion of Felimath," he said. "The fellow in the center is Saint Bertrand, if you're curious."

"I'm not, particularly."

Fyren had chosen the Choir stalls of Saint Bertrand's Cathedral for our meeting. I'll say this much: it was surprisingly private, since the organ obscured us from anyone sitting in the Nave, and vice-versa. Felimath's craftsmen had carved knotwork into the wooden stalls. Judging from its geometric designs, the silk canopy above us probably came from Calormen. Lune eyed it with disapproval. Bishop Fulbert and Lord Peridan rounded out the set. Jadis was absent, for obvious reasons.

"Orders, your Majesty?"

The _Splendor Hyaline_ had sailed more quickly than Lune's fleet of leaky cogs, and Fyren had put his time in Narnia to better use than I'd realized. When Peridan had approached the Lone Islands from the northeast, he'd threatened all three islands at once. Fyren's brothers gambled. Doorn contained most of the Lone Islands' population, including its capital, Narrowhaven. Most of their troops waited there, while the remainder guarded Anvard. Felimath, the second largest island but least the populous, received only a token garrison.

Fortunately, Fyren's brothers had overlooked two details: Felimath contained the Lone Islands' bishopric and a group of noblemen who had retained Narnian customs in the face of the Calormene cultural penetration of the south. When Fyren's fleet had appeared on the horizon, Felimath's knights had slaughtered the garrisons and thrown their lot with the new king. We had a beachhead.

In short, I'd arrived too late.

Susan had chosen her commander well, though not carefully. Peridan was a marcher lord, with all that this implies. For twenty years, Peridan had filled the Eastern Mark with Telmarine corpses whenever they'd crossed the borders. He knew the rhythm: raid and counter-raid; feint, loot, burn, and ambush. While the main fleet sat at anchor in Felimath's harbor, his galleys had scoured Avra's coast. They brought back grain and left ill will and funerals behind. Not a fair trade. I wouldn't let him repeat it.

I cleared my throat. They stopped talking.

"As you probably know, Queen Susan organized this venture rather quickly," I said.

Fyren disguised his laugh as a cough. I continued.

"...Which means that we're seriously under strength. Right now, we only have the Animals and Men we could muster on short notice, and we're already in early January. We don't need to worry about snow, but the winter storms are due pretty soon—"

"Not to mention supply problems," Peridan added.

"Right," I said. "Now as I see it, we can negotiate with Fyren's brothers until the storms come."

Fyren stood up and threw his arms out in that overblown, theatrical style that Lone Islanders occasionally lapse into and Narnians don't. Calormene influence, probably.

"Negotiate?" he said.

"It does seem best..." Bishop Fulbert said.

Fyren cut him off.

"King Edmund," he said. "My brothers will not honor any agreement that restricts the slave trade, let alone Tash worship. At most, you'll have an empty piece of parchment. At worst, you'll drive them into the Tisroc's protection."

I rose as well until we stood nearly face to face. I say 'nearly' because I'm not Peter; Fyren stood a head taller than me, and was built like a box.

"We'll negotiate," I said. "Narnia launched its fleet to enforce the Synod's ruling, not to put you on the throne."

Fyren opened his mouth and wisely shut it again. Once in a while—it's rare, but it does happen—legal technicalities swing my way. I made a show of turning to Bishop Fulbert while Fyren glared at the back of my head. I felt puffs of air from his breathing.

"Fulbert?"

"Yes, Majesty?"

"You and Peridan will act as envoys."

He bowed. From there, the meeting devolved into logistical details, troop deployments, and the ever-thorny problem of quartering our army without bleeding Felimath dry.

...But the storms were coming, and dozens of "if's" flew through my mind. If Fyren's brothers stalled until we withdrew to Terebinthia for the winter...If Fyren consolidated his hold on Felimath...If the Calormenes sent troops in the interim...If Susan didn't muster reinforcements in time...If Fyren dragged us deeper....

At the end of our meeting, I pulled Lune aside and asked him if he knew about any people who could destroy enchanted objects. He didn't.

* * *

"You're cheerful this evening," Jadis said.

I turned the page with a gentle _fwop_. It nicked my finger. Paper had come to Narnia very recently, and it was already getting on my nerves.

"I was being sarcastic," she added.

"I know."

Jadis brushed her fingers along the table. They passed through the thick layer of dust without disturbing it. She pinched her fingers together and pretended to rub it off anyway.

"Care for a game?" she asked.

"Not now."

Her voice hardened.

"You made a bargain, Edmund," she said. "Perhaps you'd prefer nightmares...?"

"I'll play two games tomorrow," I said. "How's that?"

After long negotiations, Jadis had permitted me to set up shop in a converted parish church. It didn't bother her as much as the cathedral did, and I'd refused to sleep in the charred fort on Felimath's sheep pastures. The fort's architecture bore the mark of Calormen: tapering walls and triangular teeth on the battlements that reminded me of pictures of Ancient Egyptian buildings in my schoolbooks. The church, on the other hand...

"I know why you insisted on this place," Jadis said.

"Eh?"

"It reminds you of home," she said.

"Caer Paravel?" I said.

"No."

It occurred to me that she was right. Superficially, the resemblance was tenuous—the Islanders stored their weapons in a corner of the room, piled against a door. Leather buckets and hooks for removing burning thatch sat next to them, beside the children's grammar school desks. Like Narnians, the Lone Islanders used their buildings' floorspace to the utmost.

At the same time, though, it did remind me of the little parish church in the English countryside near the Professor's house. I'd found the place musty and tedious at the time. Now...

"How did you know?" I asked.

She shrugged.

"You act like you're at home," she said. "You didn't act that way when you were in my castle or in Archenland. It's that simple."

I looked out the window. The church stood near a quay, where Narnian merchants stacked their wool into warehouses. I'd visited Portsmouth once as a child, and even allowing for my being much younger back then, the single-masted Narnian cogs that I saw out the window seemed small by our standards. For all that, though, they could carry quite a bit in the space between their high prows and sterns. We had restored the Maritime Courts immediately. If trade revived....

Another "if".

"I saw it once," Jadis said.

"What?"

"Your world," she said. "Dirty place. All brick and fog and lamps."

"Not in the countryside," I said.

Her eyes lingered on the wooden gargoyle carved into my armrest. She walked by the chessboard.

"Do you play?" she asked.

I laughed once, and knew that I would regret it.

"What are you laughing at?" she said.

"Chess," I said. "War in miniature. Did Charnians play anything that doesn't involve killing people?"

Jadis raised an eyebrow.

"And I suppose your world is a peaceful paradise?" she said.

"Not exactly," I said. "My country was fighting a war when I left."

Jadis rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward. She reminded me of the ladies at Caer Paravel when they listened to gossip.

"Who were your enemies?" she asked.

"You'd like them," I said. "Thugs. Your kind of people."

To my surprise, Jadis's smile evaporated. She spoke quietly in the same tone that she'd used before she'd struck me years ago.

"I've executed men for saying less," she said.

"Which is precisely my point," I said.

Instead of responding, she closed her eyes and sang in a language I couldn't understand. It sounded nothing like the Charnian I'd heard in our "games"; Jadis sheared the words of their guttural edges until they blended into a single syllable. The pitch of her voice became higher, less deep and liquid—the kind of singing voice that Narnian _jongleurs _compare to ringing bells or something equally unoriginal. When she stopped, I realized that my shoulders had relaxed completely. Jadis's expression was unreadable.

"That's...um..." I said.

"We were _not _barbarians," she said.

Jadis once told me that the Charnians had a saying: _The unexamined life is worth killing for_. In that moment, I began to realize what she'd meant.

"I'll play your game," I said.

We played another succession crisis. Jadis defeated me in the first hour.


	9. Chapter 8: Jadis

**Chapter 8: Jadis**

**

* * *

  
**

_The troubled flood, magic-raised, witch-summoned, roaring and billowy, burst anchorless ships from their moorings. Wave-tossed, Narnia's sons blew onto the homeland of an impious people..._

—From _King Edmund's Saga_

_

* * *

  
_

My mother cut my hair when I was a girl. This wasn't usual, but then, she was a somewhat unusual woman. I wanted to cut my own, but she wouldn't hear of it—she always said that I cut hair like a farmer cuts wheat. And oh, how I resented it...

...her

...it

When I was eight, I bought my first horse. My mother noticed bits of food coming out of its nose when it ate. She hung the man who'd sold it to me, and forbade me from making any more purchases "until I learned to handle coins better." After she left, I turned to the body swinging on the gallows and screamed the foulest insults I could think of until I went hoarse.

And so it went. When I was ten, she hovered over me like a second tutor whenever I didn't study poetry or chiromancy with sufficient rigor. By my twelfth birthday, my mother screened every boy I met---nobody, you see, was good enough for her youngest child. They all wanted sex, she said. It never occurred to my mother that romance—like study, like thrift, like cutting hair---can only be learnt by repeated failure.

I was almost grateful when she died. I've failed a lot since then, but so do most people. Even the Just King.

"I _told _you that Doorn's negotiators were stalling," I said.

Edmund glowered at me and wrapped his arms around his chest to suppress the shivers. Water dripped from his hair. It clung to his head in dark brown ringlets.

"Uncomfortable, Edmund?"

He started to reply when the wind changed course and lashed his face with rain. He blinked.

"Don't show it," I said. "Your soldiers are watching."

Not true, really. Most of his men bent over their benches and rowed with little thought to their sick, shivering king. Still, we must keep up appearances....

Iaida snickered.

"You sound like Mother," she said.

I fought the urge to strike her—it would have seemed odd to lash out at someone that Edmund couldn't see. He was already suspicious enough.

Edmund nodded. He walked to the helm and rasped his encouragement between coughs and sniffles. The storm drowned most of it out. In the distance—we couldn't see exactly _where_ through the rain—eight ships had beached on Doorn's southern shore. Edmund had gone after them. I reflected on the curious regard that he held for his soldiers, and concluded that the origin of the fault lay in his upbringing. He'd been a commoner once, after all.

"You should have pillaged the coasts," I said. "Fyren's brothers won't think you're serious unless you kill a few peasants."

Edmund opened his mouth, closed his eyes, and fought down a sneeze.

"Just to show that I'm sympathetic, I'll excuse you from your obligations today," I said.

Edmund said nothing.

"I expect two games tomorrow."

He laughed. It was a convulsing sort of laugh, since it blended with his shivers.

"I might be _dead _by morning," he said.

I pointed toward the stern, where something black had clawed its way out of the sea.

"How right you are," I said.

"Ec..." (cough) "Ectheow " Edmund said. "What's that?"

The man cupped a hand to his ear and shook his head. Edmund repeated himself. More shapes clambered up the stern like a swarm of black rats. They screeched and yowled. I turned to Tash and tilted my head toward the creatures.

"Yours?" I asked.

As he shrugged, his four arms billowed like branches. Rain slicked off his plumage.

"In a manner of speaking," he said.

"Cats!" Ectheow shouted.

Dripping animals flowed out of the water and scampered up the mast. Some clung to the sails—black spots against a white field like flies on bread. Others chewed the rigging. One broke a fang and screeched. Tar had darkened its mouth.

"Kill them!" Edmund yelled.

By now, the cats had filled most of the boat. A fat tabby---waist-high, about the size of a large dog---waddled into the center of the swarm. It leaned to one side. And then the other...

"I see where this is going," I said.

Tash chuckled. The cats swayed in unison. The boat keeled and tipped with each movement as the Narnians struggled to remain upright. A man fell into the sea, where his mail shirt dragged him under. The storm swallowed his scream. I clicked my tongue.

"Seems unsporting," I said.

Tash turned sideways and searched my face with an expressionless eye.

"You're pleading for him?" he said.

"Don't be absurd," I said. "I merely suggest that it's a boring way for an interesting king to die."

Tash continued to stare. The claws on his feet _scritched _one by one against the deck.

"Ahhhhh..." he said. "You're afraid of losing the box."

"Correct."

Edmund hacked an animal from the rigging. She screamed a human scream and plunged into the sea. Three sisters replaced her.

"Then save him," Tash said.

"And your plan?"

"You don't know what I'm planning," he said.

The vessel tilted dangerously to the leeward side. Another swing....

"You're giving me a choice?" I said.

"If you want to call it that."

I eyed the leader, and she looked back at me. Her eyes were yellow; dripping mats of fur nearly covered them.

_Hello, Queen of Charn_

_And Queen of Narnia_, I replied. _Empress of the Lone Islands, Chatelaine of Caer Paravel---_

She winked.

_Not anymore._

_You've brought your coven with you from Doorn_, I said.

_Yes._

_In that case, they can watch you die._

I whispered the necessary words. Steam hissed when the raindrops hit her skin as she boiled from the inside out. Her sisters stopped swaying.

"And take your storm with you," I said.

They scattered. A knife buried itself into a cat's back as she sprang from the mast. Her body jerked in midair and tumbled. I turned and saw Edmund, right arm outstretched, still poised at the end of his throw.

"Did you...?"

"No," I said.

I pointed at the clearing sky, where sunbeams cut through the clouds. They fell on the capsized hulls of three more Narnian galleys that had foundered in the storm. Their crews had already drowned.

"Lovely weather we're having," I said. "...And Edmund?"

"What?"

"I'm going to insist on a game tonight after all," I said.

Rather than replying, he bent over the side and coughed for several minutes.

* * *

The Narnians had formed a shield wall on a knoll that overlooked the beach. The respite had not lasted; rain plinked on their helmets and dribbled through their surcoats. On the shore itself, a troupe of dwarfs dumped extra weight into the surf. I doubted that this measure would lighten the ships enough to dislodge them, but Edmund was an incurable optimist. The Just King's wheezing breaths formed clouds as he slogged through the mud from one trouble spot to the other.

A lead slingbolt buzzed by my head.

"Edmund?"

"What?"

A second bolt passed through my head, and I reflected that being dead has a few advantages. On instinct, I swatted at it.

"This is irritating," I said.

His bleary eyes narrowed.

"Then why don't _you _find a way to shoot back with wet bowstrings?" he snapped.

"Touchy, aren't you?"

I heard a _zip–clang–thunk_ further along the line and saw a man lying in the mud. Rainwater diluted the blood. That's war for you.

"Get _out _of my way," Edmund said.

While Edmund pointlessly comforted the stricken man, my sister picked at her fingernails. They made a dry cracking sound as she snapped the ends off one after the other.

"What?" Iaida said. "They keep growing after you're dead. Tash won't give me scissors."

"It's disgusting," I said.

"I can either break the ends off or bite them off," Iaida replied. "And, well...."

She smiled and revealed fragile teeth in thin gums. Her voice wavered when she spoke again.

"You know what mother said: A lady should always look her best," she said. "Can't have my teeth breaking off, can I...?"

Her smile had vanished.

"Sorry," I said.

"S'okay...."

Tash snorted.

"Pathetic," he said.

"She's not—" I began

"I was referring to you," he said. "Still can't face death like a Queen of Charn, can you?"

Another sound of lead hitting flesh. Another crash somewhere along the line.

"What do you mean?" I said.

The flesh around his beak wrinkled.

"Running through tired scripts," he said. "Replaying family dramas. Pretending you care about a sister you buried a thousand years ago."

"As opposed to what?" I said.

"Wouldn't want to turn that keen analytical mind inward, would we?" he said.

"I don't know what you mean."

Tash crossed his arms behind his back and paced around us. Worms wriggled out of the mud and tried to crawl away as his feet passed. He laughed and tickled Iaida's back with one of his claws. She buried her face on my shoulder.

"I doubt it," Tash said. "Oh, by _all _means, keep summoning the corpse that you hold in your arms and play 'sisters' with it. Summon them all! I have them waiting for you."

"She _is _my sister," I said.

Tash ignored me.

"Perhaps you could summon Linshiol, hmmm?" he said. "Or Affa....?"

"Stop talking."

He shrugged.

"Your choice," he said. "I'll be collecting your soul soon enough anyway. In the meantime, keep playing your games...including the game with Edmund."

"Why?"

Tash skewered a worm on his toe and brought it to his mouth. I heard his joints pop as he bent his leg in the requisite unnatural direction. He didn't swallow the worm. Instead, he watched it writhe like a child watching a candle's flame.

"I want you to wear Edmund down," he said. "Not _destroy_, mind you---wear down."

"To what end?"

"That's none of your affair."

The worm stopped moving. Tash slurped it down and clapped his hands together as he gave us his closest equivalent to a smile.

"Right, then! Time to go, Iaida..."

For as long as I remain conscious, I hope that I never see another look like the one my sister gave me when Tash took her away.


	10. Chapter 9: Edmund

**Chapter 9: Edmund**

The Lone Islanders sniped at us throughout the night. Few Narnians died, but many more were wounded—Doorn's slingers used oblong balls of lead, which traveled faster than rocks and penetrated skin more deeply. A few bore inscriptions like "Take That". I didn't appreciate the humor. Jadis did.

I sent Fingal and Fergus, our hawks, to keep an eye out for our enemies. The Doornians had retreated after morning came, since Narnian archers could pick them off as long as the rain didn't interfere with our longbows. The sea had calmed. We did our best to dislodge our grounded ships from shore. The dwarves took pleasure in the work, groaning and cursing good-naturedly as they tugged the ropes.

Then Fergus returned.

"Where's Fin—?"

"Dead," he said. "Crossbow."

A cloud of dust billowed in the distance, and as it came closer I saw glints of metal through it. Two....three thousand men, maybe more. _Probably _more. I had two hundred men on the hill and another six hundred on the beach. Fergus watched the Doorneans sternly from a perch on my shoulder.

"Right flank?" I asked.

"Banner's per saltire," he growled. "Azure and gules. Eagle, armed vert. Hamish's standard."

So...Fyren's older brother was on the right. I didn't know much about him, other than that he was a good horseman. It wouldn't help him, much---the ground was still soggy. Cavalry would sink.

"The center?" I said.

"Per pale indent—"

"Give me the short version," I said.

Fergus fixed me with one of those stoic, predatory gazes that hawks can't change like humans do. I've occasionally wondered what it's like to communicate without smiles or frowns.

"Alexander," he said. "The one who got the throne. Don't recognize the man on the left wing. Calormene, though. Young. Tough-looking."

"I have a pretty good idea," I said.

In the minutes that followed, I formed a shield wall and broke out the waxed longbows from their leather coverings. I traded a few words with the Lords of Owlwood and Terebinthia, who demanded that I withdraw to the fleet. When I refused, Jadis rolled her eyes and rubbed the brooch on her neck.

"Noble idiot," she muttered.

The argument stopped when the Doorneans came close enough that we could see the steel plates on their horses and their thicket of spearpoints. A few carried bows. Most of the footsoldiers wore the Calormene lamellar shirts that shrugged off arrows as if the scales had springs underneath. Doorn's knights dismounted and approached us ahead of the main body. Their right flank wheeled toward the beach while their right pinned us.

"They're cutting you off," Jadis said.

"Back to the ships!" I shouted.

Narnians and Archenlanders scrambled down the hill in small groups. I stayed behind with a few of Lune's housecarls and directed the retreat. Lune's men handled the responsibility well—most were older men, with bits of gray creeping up the sides of their heads. A few had double chins from Lune's red meat and mead.

A Doornean in armor crested the hill. The nearest housecarl brought a two-handed axe down his head in a motion seemed offhand, like swatting a fly. The man collapsed. More Doorneans appeared at the top of the hill and lobbed rocks at us. A few threw javelins.

It's a terrifying thing to watch a retreat become a rout. An army can protect you. A panicked crowd can't. Men yanked and pushed the boats into the water. One slipped into the surf when he tried to climb on. He emerged coughing up seawater. The rain fell again. We formed another line around the ships.

An arrow caught the Lord of Terebinthia in the chest, and we pulled him behind the line. Jadis leaned her head to one side and tapped her cheek. She looked at the man as if she was inspecting a work of art.

"He won't make it," she said.

The Doornean line edged forward, accompanied by the usual shouts and shaking weapons that men use to steel themselves before they fight. They clashed their swords rhythmically against their shields. Our side did the same.

Jadis inhaled deeply and sighed.

"I love this part," she said.

The range closed, and the two armies exchanged spear thrusts. Ash shafts clacked. Doornean and Narnian fenced and jabbed at one another's faces from behind two walls of shields. Screams. Blood. We closed. The battle became a shoving match. The Doorneans tried to push our line over. At the rear of the Doornean line, Hamish dismounted and pushed his way toward the front. It was hard to miss him—he wore a helmet plated with gold and set with precious stones.

I heard Jadis's voice in my ear. She'd walked through the middle of our ranks as if they'd been air.

"I can kill him, you know," she said. "He's one of ours."

"No."

"Think how many lives you'd save, Edmund..."

"Get away from me!"

The man next to me shot me a bewildered look.

"I don't want your help," I said. "Leave!"

Jadis smiled and ran her tongue along her teeth.

"This one's on me," she said.

Hamish's body jerked. He dropped, and something that looked like smoke rose from his armor. The men around him jumped back. Discouraged shouts rose from the Doornean line.

"Well?" Jadis said. "I've given you an opportunity. Use it."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Much as it made my skin crawl, she was right. This was our chance.

"Forward!" I said.

The Doornean line wavered, then scattered. The Archenlanders cut some of them down as they ran, but they didn't pursue them far. The Doorneans ran up the hill and formed along the summit, where they threw rocks and javelins that hit the sand far from our main line. Two of our fyrdsmen pried the jeweled belt from Hamish's body. I stopped them and kept the advance going. Jadis raised her arm dramatically toward the hill.

"Ha! Watch them tremble, little king..."

Another round of steel biting through mail. We swept them from the hill, and watched them scamper down the other side like dogs in a hunt.

I looked behind me. Broken bodies lined the beach. One of our boats had capsized, but we could free the remaining seven and head for Felimath in the morning with the rest of our force....although few were left. The cumulative effects of a sleepless night, sickness, and battle hit me a few minutes later. I sank to my knees and gagged.

And then, when I'd coughed my lungs to exhaustion and shivered until my muscles couldn't move, I felt Jadis's hand below my chin. She pulled my face up until my eyes met hers.

"Edmund?" she said.

I could only choke in reply.

"You _owe _me."


	11. Chapter 10: Jadis

_Ed,_

_The Bellmaker hasn't figured out the casting process yet. Don't worry, though; it'll be ready by spring._

_--Lucy_

* * *

**Chapter 10: Jadis**

The Just King was not enjoying his vacation. Edmund had sent the fleet to Terebinthia for the winter, which left him alone with a small Narnian garrison and Felimath firmly under Fyren's control. Fyren's surviving brother still held the other islands, and Edmund would have to wait until spring to dislodge him.

Two days after the storm, a body had washed up on shore. She had been naked and pale, and a dagger had protruded from her back. Edmund's dagger. Water must have washed the oils from her skin that allowed her to keep her cat form. Fyren had taken one look at the corpse and sent a request to Galma for Sigerite Inquisitors. Edmund had resisted. Unfortunately, the Just King had few troops and little leverage in Felimath, and Fyren's ship had sailed. In a few weeks, I would be able to watch a witch-hunt in all its entertaining glory.

Edmund had sat next to the body for a long time as the waves washed in.

...But that was real life.

At the moment, I cared more about a game.

I took another look at the board. Edmund's pawn phalanx had deteriorated in the center, and his king hid from mine behind the only pawn that hadn't advanced. My _faras_—you'd probably call it a knight—waited on the board's right edge. It threatened a pawn on Edmund's flank. I took it. In another turn, I could drive his _al-fil_ away from the king. The Just King grumbled about what he called "the incomprehensible rules of medieval chess".

"Any news from Susan?" I said.

Edmund rested his cheek on his hand. He slipped his _al-fil_ to the side of the board. He'd saved the piece, but paralyzed it. If it moved, I could take it.

"She's still marrying Fyren, if that's what you mean," he said.

I advanced my second knight. It reinforced the barrier that I'd formed around Edmund's king. Soon, the _fers_—you'd probably call it the queen, although it only moved a space at a time in any direction—could move in and finish him off.

"You're talkative today," I said.

Edmund held the neck of his king and rolled it on the board like a dropped coin in slow motion.

"Good move last week," he said.

"Oh?"

"You told me the price of your 'gift' after I used it," he said.

I smiled.

"And you think I'll ignore your obligation if you humor me?" I said.

Edmund knocked one of my knights off the board. Knight takes knight. The ivory pieces clicked.

_Drat._

"Actually…" Edmund said.

"What?"

"I'm humoring you so that I won't feel bad when I refuse to give you whatever I 'owe' you," he said.

No choice now; I moved my _fers_ toward the center. Without the knight, it seemed open. Vulnerable.

"You said that Charnians only care about violence," I said.

He shrugged. His _al-fil_ scuttled backward toward my king.

"Yeah…sorry about that," he said.

I scoffed and moved my own _al-fil_ into his path.

"You're laying it on a bit thick, little king."

"Eh?"

His pawn advanced. In two moves, he could retrieve his rook.

"Apologizing to me," I said.

Again, Edmund shrugged.

"Look," he said. "You had a tiny shred of humanity that I didn't know about and I stomped on it. Believe what you want. I _am_ sorry."

_Al-fil _takes pawn. Knight takes _al-fil_. _Fers_—queen—advances.

"Aslan's little paladin," I muttered.

"Eh?"

"I _don't_ believe you," I said. "But I'll give you this much, Edmund: You're more manipulative than I thought."

We exchanged pawns on the left flank. The survivors stood face-to-face, deadlocked. I focused on the center again. Edmund's blather about my 'humanity' had irked me for some reason, so...

"Do you know why you haven't murdered your brother and sisters yet, Edmund?"

"Huh?"

His hand hovered over his king.

"Careful," I said. "Once you touch a piece, you have to move it."

Edmund ran his fingers through his hair and moved his pawn toward my side of the board instead. A blunder. I snatched it with my _al-fil_.

"Because I love them," he said.

_Now_ he moved his king. Too late. My pawn was only a square away from promotion. I grinned and shook my finger at him.

"Wrong," I said.

Edmund rolled his eyes. I took his _al-fil_.

"Enlighten me, then."

"Plant toxicity," I said.

Edmund's king hobbled toward the pawn even though it would arrive too late. Useless bravery.

"You're joking," he said.

"No," I said. "I'm not."

The thought had first struck me in Charn when I lay down beside my sister's body on the Last Battlefield. The stars still twinkled; that was the peculiar thing. They had guided the destinies of millions of dead Charnians, and yet there they were. They had outlasted us. But the stars had seemed suddenly empty. Their heavenly dance didn't foreshadow wars or births or plagues or anything. They just _were_.

I'd remembered my childhood. Iaida's death had meant a lot to me when I was a girl: Growing up. New responsibilities as an only child. Loss. A new room…

…And of course, my mother's death. Someone—I'd never learned who--had slipped a cursed extract of _jugiza_ into her meat at breakfast. My mother lost her energy. Once upon a time, she had driven me ragged, fussing with my hair and tightening my corsets until I could barely breathe. Now she crawled into bed and slept. She missed appointments, broke promises. When we buried the year's Grain King alive to convince Zardeenah to renew the harvest, my mother remained in her room. Mother once allowed me to sleep beside her, but I distanced myself from her soon afterward.

I pictured mother's exhaustion as a disease and worried about catching it, so I busied myself with the things that my mother _would_ have wanted when she was still my mother. I learned my poetry, music, and magic, and wasted a lot of time crying. When my friends asked, I told them that she was busy. They didn't believe me, but I wasn't a very good liar yet.

If I could do it all over again, I would cut the link even sooner.

And Father, and Linshiol, and Affa…

In short, I'd seen many deaths, and all of those deaths had meant different things to me. But meanings seemed too romantic for a world without people. I thought about their roots. The pun is intentional: the answer lay in the Charnian_ materia medica_.

I didn't tell Edmund any of this, of course.

"Think about it," I said.

I promoted my pawn to a rook. Edmund's king hesitated between my knight the new piece. It scrambled to an unoccupied square in the board's left corner.

"I don't get it," he said.

King takes pawn. Knight threatens king. King retreats. _Fers_ advances.

I sighed.

"If you wanted to poison someone in Narnia, what would you use?" I said.

"I dunno…hemlock?"

"Exactly," I said. "It tastes bitter and you'd need a lot of it. Not an ideal assassination weapon."

King retreats. Knight takes pawn. King retreats. Knight threatens king…

"Now take _jugiza_, for instance," I said. "Tasteless. Magical. Best of all, it _lingers_. The victim takes months to die, but she falls into depression first. The family structure collapses."

"Charming," he said.

King retreats. Rook threatens king. King retreats. Knight threatens king.

"Imagine a world," I said, "where anyone can kill anyone else _easily_, and nobody knows who did it."

"…and a single family owns the world," he finished. "High stakes."

"You see?" I said.

"I'm beginning to," he replied.

"Checkmate, by the way."

Edmund stood up and slowly exhaled. He pushed his king over.

"Let me show you something," he said.

"What?" I said.

"One of _my_ games."

* * *

We arrived at a field on the edge of Felimath's harbor. Dwarves scurried through trenches that they had apparently dug at random while human overseers shouted orders. Sometimes, Dwarven heads disappeared as they walked through the trenches, but I followed their movements by the plumes of smoke that rose above them. They clenched long-necked pipes in their mouths. The length was a necessity, since their oversized pipe bowls burned hot, and they sucked their tobacco in greedy gulps. Good workers, as always. They'd served me zealously during the war against Aslan, and replied to their new overlords with gnashed teeth and grumbles. Still loyal to their deceased queen. Fools.

"Slaves?" I asked.

I laughed when Edmund shot me a horrified look.

"Of course not," he said. "Don't let the whining fool you. We pay them more than human laborers."

"Why?"

"Because they work faster and better," he said.

"What a quaint notion."

"Speaking of quaint…" he said.

Edmund pointed to a section that the Dwarves had carved out of the hill. They'd piled bits of rubbish a short distance away—a brooch, a piece of carved ivory, a barbed spearpoint, and a few broken pots.

"Explain," I said.

"This was once a tavern," he said. "The whalers came here a thousand years ago after driving schools of blackfish ashore."

"You learned this from the locals?"

Edmund shook his head.

"We learned it from the stuff we dug up," he said. "They built this place before Felimath converted."

He showed me a basement that had once held barrels of whale oil, and a few copper coins that had oxidized into green flakes. A grave plot with death's heads on the stones stood perhaps fifty paces from the ruins. ("From King Olvin's time. We found a gold hairpin that corresponds with the Pire excavations in Narnia…") The graves were in a glade. Grass grew where bramble should have been, and a willow hung over the headstones.

A short distance from _that_, the surf _swoshed_ onto shore. Edmund swept his hand along the wall of the trench. He stopped at a point where the dirt changed from black to nutmeg brown.

"See this?" he said.

"Dirt," I said.

"Layers," he replied. "Each one comes from a different time, and the older stuff is deeper. I read about it before I came to Narnia."

"What's the point?" I said.

Edmund gave me an odd look that I couldn't quite place.

"You never wondered about Narnia's past?" he said. "Who built the Stone Table? Cair Paravel? The barrows in Galma?"

The light was fading. A dwarf snatched a jade bead from the dirt. It sparkled in the sunset for a moment before he stuffed it into a pocket when the foreman wasn't looking.

"No," I said. "I saw Narnia when it was built and I understand how it operates. Anything else is for philosophers and fools."

Edmund leaned against the trench wall. His foreman bickered with the Dwarf, who denied everything in a high-pitched screech.

"What you said earlier about poison and siblings…" Edmund said.

"What?" I said.

"You killed your family, didn't you?"

A blinking white spot fluttered a short distance away. I realized that it was a moth. I met Edmund's eyes and gave him an offhand wave.

"Oh, most of them," I said. "No great loss."

For once, Edmund didn't look away.

"Then I feel sorry for you," he said.

My shoulders tightened. I tried to slap him, but I'd forgotten to solidify myself in time, and the open palm passed through his face. And he just _stood_ there with that smug, sanctimonious look on his face. I took a breath and lowered my voice until it sounded calm—the way a Charnian queen should sound.

"Edmund?"

"What?"

"You will _regret_ saying that."


	12. Chapter 11: Edmund

**Chapter 11: Edmund**

* * *

_I shiver in a throne room. I know that the Turkish delight is in here somewhere, and my tongue twitches in anticipation. I feel sick, but I need it. Behind me, wolves pull cords attached to the doors. They slam. The largest wolf remains in the room. As he circles me, his claws make a ticking sound on the ice. Time running out. His nose probes my fur coat. He sniffs. _

_My breath freezes into a cloud, and the cloud becomes a silver hand that brushes my cheek. _

_A woman enters the throne room. She's as I remember her: tall, thin…black hair, high cheekbones, black eyes without pupils. Beautiful. Even now, I can't begrudge her that._

"_Where are your brother and sisters?" she says._

_

* * *

  
_

I heard a _tsk-tsk_ over my shoulder, and wondered if I was awake.

"Couldn't stay away, could you?" Jadis said. "What a shame. Let's try again"

"What's going on…?" I mumbled.

* * *

_Despite my best efforts, I've crept outside the beavers' house again. I'm in withdrawal, and the pains are getting worse. _

_I can take it…_

_I __can__ take it…_

_I double over and hold my stomach. My hands crook into claws. Something whispers in the trees, and eyes open in the snow. Mouths appear in each tree—they have human lips, but sharks' teeth protrude from the gums. A bluejay flies past my head. Its feathers drop off as the skin on its wings stretches and becomes translucent. Its legs split into four, and then eight. A proboscis forms where the beak once was. A giant mosquito._

"_Just hallucinations," I tell myself. "That food she gave you is playing tricks. It's NOT real…"_

_My ten-year-old body works against me. __He__ hasn't faced starvation on campaign, or suffered broken bones and punctured lungs that Lucy barely fixed in time. He only knows what he needs, and NOW._

_And so I find myself in a throne room, shivering…_

"_Please, Majesty, may I have some more Turkish--"_

"_Where are your brother and sisters?"_

_

* * *

  
_

Jadis laughed.

"Mmm…This is too easy," she said. "Let's try something else."

"What's going on?!"

* * *

_The Lone Islands. I think. Fireplaces stand at either end of the hall, which means that I'm somewhere south of Galma. Further north, they put the hearth in the center so that they don't disperse the heat. I sniff the air. Cedar. _

_Calormen exports cedar. So is this before…?_

"_My lord?"_

_Oh. Two young people stand in the doorway. The man sports a bloody lip and a shattered hand. The woman supports him, so his leg's probably injured. They're married, and their 'master' wants to separate them._

_I take them in. Their 'master' and his footmen arrive a moment later. I notice the interior of my building, and realize that it's a church. So that makes me…?_

_The nobleman speaks._

"_You're holding my slaves, priest."_

_Let's see…_

"_Sanctuary," I say. "Canon law prohibits breaking up a marriage."_

_The man scratches his nose and smiles. His teeth are extremely clean. _

"_You depend on my peasants for food, priest."_

_No army. No weapons._

_I negotiate. Oaths work in Narnia; I return the slaves in exchange for a promise that he won't break up their marriage. He places his hands on a box of relics and agrees._

_The nobleman keeps his vow. He buries them alive. Together._

_

* * *

  
_

I woke up in a cave, shivering and panting. Diamonds and emeralds glinted on the ceiling. The walls were made of some sort of purple stone that reflected light; I touched them and realized that they were ceramic, and the purple sheen came from glaze. I felt hair brushing against my leg. My knee shot upward. Something small and furry scampered between my feet and disappeared into a hole. Susan's face reflected from the wall.

I turned around. Nobody.

"What the--?"

I noticed a hole where my foot had been. Black sludge. I stepped on another spot that looked more solid, but my foot oozed into the stuff until it passed my ankle.

"Odd place," Jadis said.

As usual, Jadis floated in midair as if she was resting on a sofa. She lay sideways, so that the hem of her dress hung near the sludge, but didn't touch it. It was black. The dress, I mean.

"How did you do this?" I demanded.

She shook a finger at me.

"Wrong question," she said. "Try this: Where am I?"

"I'm not in the mood for—"

"Welcome to your mind when you're asleep," she said. "This is the dream you _would _have experienced if I hadn't interrupted you."

I saw my reflection. A boy looked back from the glazed wall, his unnerved expression framed by pink cheeks and freckles that I'd lost a long time ago. Me. When I saw Turkish delight crammed into his pocket, my hand shot to my own. I felt the stickiness of smashed pastry.

Jadis twirled a lock of my hair around her finger as she hummed the song I'd heard earlier. It seemed harsher now. Her lips curled into a crooked sort of smile, but the rest of her face didn't move.

"I prefer you as a child," she said. "Less interesting, perhaps…but you didn't bring up awkward issues that _adults_ should know better than to talk about."

"I won't take it back," I said. "I _do_ feel sorry for you."

She breathed sharply, and then I found myself dangling at the end of her arm. Her fingers felt like metal straps. I couldn't have done anything if I'd still been the seventeen-year-old king of Narnia with seven years of weapons practice; as a ten year old boy, my situation was hopeless. Besides, this was a dream. Whatever the rules of this world were, she could obviously control them.

_Okay,_ I thought._ Calm down …_

"We had a deal," I said. "You can't give me nightmares as long as I play your game, and this constitutes a _serious_ breach of contract--"

Jadis laughed.

"Oh, but we _are_ playing a game!" she said. "Three so far: two from your own memories and one from the history of this rotten little island. Now then…what shall we play next?"

Air rushed past my face. We flew through the tunnels so fast that they became a purple blur. Finally, we emerged in the sunlight. I heard a cicada. Jadis pointed.

"Observe," she said. "Edmund Pevensie, the _King_ of Narnia."

A young man rode a horse along a dirt path. Birds twittered. A black beetle crawled among the flakes of dead wood in a tree trunk next to us. Jadis pulled my head—and attention—back to the young man. Me. Again.

And a girl. He was looking at a girl. Peasant. Blond hair, like the straw in the field around her. Quite pretty. I remembered. My younger self shook his head and rode on, as usual. The horse kicked up bits of sod.

"Shall we play _this_ game again?" Jadis said.

The sun baked me in my tweed jacket. I felt itches as the first sweat drops formed.

"What game?" I said. "I never even said 'hello'."

"Precisely."

Phantoms of other girls appeared in the cloudless sky. One wore her brown hair in two buns in the style of Terebinthia. Jane, her name was. She was a financier's daughter; her grandfather had figured out a loophole in canon laws against usury. He couldn't lend money directly, but the bishops didn't prohibit a fee for _currency conversion. _The family had made a fortune.

That money could have forestalled Peter's first bankruptcy in the Northern War. We wouldn't have needed to debase the currency, or dismiss Parliament…

Esme, from Telmar. I'd liked her well enough. The marriage would have secured Peter's western borders and created a Pevensie claim on the Telmarine throne. I'd tried to arrange it. Really, I had…

Each vanished in turn and made way for the next.

Jadis tossed a pinecone against a trunk. It clacked. A squirrel at the top of the tree skittered into a hole in the bark, which was probably good thinking. I'd seen Jadis spit a sparrow with a knife from twenty yards.

"Sad, really," Jadis said.

"What?"

"Tell me, Edmund: Did you become uncomfortable with women _after_ you met me, or were you always this repressed?"

I stared at the gray splotches of mold on the bark and ignored her laughter. Or tried to. It cut through the afternoon air like a cold knife. Jadis pressed her fingers on my forehead and grinned.

"I wonder if you have any fantasies of _me_ in there…" she said. "Let's see, shall we?"

I tried to push her away. It was like trying to bend a metal statue. Jadis fussily slapped my hand and closed her eyes. The entire scene—the birds, the grass, the pine trees and aphids and horseflies and glaring sunlight—vibrated. A rift appeared. I saw scenes through it: Galma's plague, the day I'd tried Lord Gerbert of Owlwood for treason, the Revolt of '01, when the peasants burned their tax records and killed anyone who could read or write…

Memories I'd rather forget.

I felt Jadis's consciousness probe further. She trawled through deep, ugly parts of my mind that I hadn't known existed. Repressed urges and fears bubbled to the surface. I felt the obvious things, of course, like guilt at betraying my family and the pain of Jadis's dagger in my chest.

And then I saw other things through the murk. I remembered my discomfort at Narnia's lack of privacy, and realized that I'd never completely lost it. Narnian families ate together, slept six-to-a-bed, and drank from the same mugs. Front doors opened into bedrooms rather than halls. Servants followed me every night to the privy.

_Huh, _Jadis said. _Your world __also__ cares privacy, then… _

Deeper and deeper. Older boys at the boarding school pushed me down and swiped my books. My sword cut through a Telmarine's jaw during the war against Basarab II. I called Lucy a liar and teased her about the wardrobe when our siblings believed me instead. A man from my fief on the Western March set a neighbor's house on fire, burning the neighbor's family alive as they slept. I'd sentenced the murderer to death. More Turkish delight….

…Jadis…

Oh yes. I saw her there, too. My subconscious had built a whole gallery for her—the stinging blows, the downward curl of thin red lips before she became angry, speculations about her origins, the syllables of the spells she'd used on me, and…other things. I heard a dry chuckle.

_What a dirty mind you have_, Jadis said.

_GET OUT!_

_In good time, Edmund. In good time…_

I became aware of sounds that didn't come from my memories. The dream flickered. I realized that I was waking up when the threads of Jadis's mind retreated before the oncoming morning.

_Drat_, Jadis muttered. _Just when it was getting interes—AHH!_

I opened my eyes. Light. A blur. I blinked.

Jadis hovered a foot over my bed. Her hair and dress waved in unnaturally slow motion as if she was underwater. She gripped my hand with her own. Those black eyes had widened in what I soon realized was pain. I closed my eyes again, and felt a few of her mental tendrils that hadn't returned in time. Trapped.

A flood of images swept through me. I didn't recognize any of them at first, but words and associations formed around them until I saw that they were memories.

_Charn—Linshiol—Affa—Initiation Ceremony—Poison—Mother—Spiced Wine—Tash—Father—Jugiza—Vanix—Poetry—Affa—The Deplorable Word—Loss—Iaida—Unicorns—Leaving—Jur—Aslan—Prophecy—Iaida—THAT place…._

…_Affa…_

* * *

The final piece of her mind wrenched free from mine. Jadis maintained enough control that she managed to float to the ground before she collapsed into a chair. She was breathing heavily. So was I. Jadis's fingers tightened around the armrest. They were shaking.

"What did you see?" she said.

Jadis's torso seemed to want to curl into itself, but she tightened her grip on the armrests and pushed herself into a halfhearted slump. Not that it matters. I wasn't in the mood to humor her.

"If you ever—_ever_—try anything like that again, I'll chop your game to splinters," I said.

Jadis's voice became shrill.

"_What did you see_?"

I stood up and staggered for the door. As I said: I wasn't in the mood to humor her.

"Before you accuse _me _of being repressed, you'd better take a look at your non-relationship with Affa," I said.

Jadis's eyes snapped open. Before that moment, I hadn't realized that black-on-black eyes could show panic. As she fumbled for words, I gave her an ironic bow and slammed the door.

When I came back later, Jadis was gone. She didn't return to my room for three days.


	13. Chapter 12: Jadis

**Chapter 12: Jadis**

Those who are misguided enough to believe in evil—whatever _that_ might be—imagine that evil people don't feel shame. Not so. Cruelty is a dish with many recipes: a little shame, a bit of resentment, a large dash of sadism or lust or…Do I even need to say it? Love. Shame has its place among the rest.

I speak theoretically, of course.

"Well?" Tash said.

"Well what?" I said.

"It's been three days. What are you waiting for?"

My footsteps fell silently, while Tash's claws scratched and scraped the sandstone floor. We walked through a dark hallway; Charn's oil lamps had gone out long ago. Statues of household gods smiled at me from their cubbyholes in the wall. They stroked their plaited stone beards and watched us pass through oversized eyes of lapis lazuli. Most wore kilts which their makers had inscribed with crosshatched lines so that they resembled coarse linen. One waved at me. Delfwick, I think we called him. I'd hidden under his shrine and traded riddles with him when I was a little girl.

I didn't return the greeting.

"Edmund saw into my mind," I said.

Tash tongue clicked.

"And…?" he said.

"He _saw_ into my _mind_."

Tash shrugged, and his feathers churned the dead air. A breeze passed my ear.

"I fail to see how that affects _my_ plans," he said. "Edmund only saw older memories."

"He knows how I think," I said.

Tash laughed. The chamber's narrowness amplified his wet, choked gargle. Statues sank to their knees and covered their ears.

"Edmund always knew how you thought," he said. "He just never realized that you had _feelings_."

_Well, there it is…_

"What's your point?" I said.

As usual, Tash changed the subject rather than give a direct answer.

"He's attracted to you," he said.

"And disgusted by it," I replied. "You can't use it against him, if that's what you're getting at."

We passed into a larger hall, where Charn's most ancient kings had stored the plunder from their campaigns. On the walls, stiffly posed kings received tribute from Nilzmaizites and Zainsites. Charn's artists had not discovered perspectives or vanishing points yet, so they'd piled the tribute in cross-sectioned hills that looked like rubbish heaps. The Nilzmaizite ambassadors cringed on the ground with arms stretched upward; the sculptors had carved delicate fingernails into the stone.

"Those images of you in Edmund's mind…" he said.

"What about them?"

He clucked twice, and the dome above us echoed.

"Interesting viewing, eh?"

"He's a wreck," I said. "A hollow, burned out—"

Tash slashed the wall, digging four parallel furrows in the limestone. The claws screeched like metal on slate.

"Consider yourself fortunate that Edmund didn't explore _your_ mind as thoroughly as you explored _his_, little princess," Tash said. "Or shall I—"

"No," I said. "Don't."

I admired the dome again. The sun god's face blazed at the center, and black lines radiated from him to the archways. Each line terminated in a hand. I remembered again that the room had come from an age when Charn's sky had not yet cooled. In those days, the sun god's touch still blackened and killed.

"For the record," Tash said, "Just what _did_ you do to Edmund seven years ago?"

I threaded my fingers together and felt my skin's smoothness. Still alive. Well…life_like, _anyway.

"It's amazing what happens to a child's psyche when you take away sleep," I said. "Add some spells, starvation rations, a few slaps..."

The feathers above Tash's eyes bobbed up and down. He brushed the flank of a stone sphinx near the doorway like a jockey rubbing down a horse.

"Nothing else?" he said. "As in…ah…"

He laughed his gargling laugh again.

"Don't be revolting," I said. "He was ten years old."

Tash shrugged.

"Wouldn't have stopped _me_," he said.

"He was a _child_," I said. "Do you think Edmund would still be functional if I did that to him?"

Tash held a plumed finger to his lips and giggled.

"My, my…" he said. "Struck a nerve, haven't I?"

I glared and suppressed a reply that would have earned me a taste of what waited for me in the afterlife…and how far away was _that_ exactly? How many years? _Months...?_

"Let's be frank," Tash said. "We both know that you're innocent on that score. But even though you didn't do what I'm implying, your _anger_ at the accusation…that sweet, savory _indignation_…"

"What do you—"

"He's not a child anymore, is he?" Tash said.

"No, but--"

"I've seen it before, you know," Tash said. "Spirits divorced from their bodies get…edgy."

I snorted. 'Unladylike' by Charnian standards, but no matter.

"Don't make me laugh," I said.

We stopped in front of a clay channel that had dried up when Charn died. It descended from a time before writing, when Gedir IV had diverted the Lonshi's waters through his palace. He'd meant it as a symbol of royal power. In those days, the river's floods had come in sudden downpours. People would flee, and the mud bricks of their ugly little houses would sink into the muck. Aslan once told me that people fashion gods in their world's image, and I agreed: I could see Tash's genesis in the Lonshi. Its unpredictable waters mirrored his whimsy, and his sadism.

Zardeenah transformed Gedir IV into a jackal for his presumption. Or so the stories say.

"As absurd as all that?" Tash said.

"Yes."

"Mm," he said. "No doubt you're right. And when you crept through Edmund's mind like a rat crawling to warmth..."

Tash chuckled.

"…coincidence."

I rolled my eyes.

"As usual, you sacrifice _facts_ for drama," I said.

"Oh?"

"I seduced the last of King Frank's line, didn't I?" I said.

Tash nodded.

"I shared his bed while I wrapped him in enchantments, didn't I?"

Again, Tash nodded.

"And when my followers swept down from the north and put all the humans to the sword…You tell _me_, Lord Tash: What did I do _then_?"

"You sacrificed the king on the Stone Table," he admitted.

"With no remorse," I said.

Tash's eyes narrowed and his cheeks puffed out—a rueful smile.

"With no remorse," he agreed.

"And why should Edmund be different?"

A marble band ran along the border between the wall and the ceiling. Men in chariots paraded across it, carved in relief. The sculptor had exaggerated the wheels, so that the viewer could only see the warriors and their charioteers through the spokes. The broken bodies of Charn's enemies stuck to the rims like squashed rats.

"Oh, you thrashed about in _bed_ with the last of Frank's line," Tash said. "I'll grant you that much. Your body did its job admirably. And such a fine body it was…"

He drew his claws along my side. They moved in a start-stop rhythm as they caught on the fabric and jerked free. My skin felt hollow where they passed.

"Get to the point," I said.

He breathed in and out. The air whistled through his nostrils.

"Shades get more than they bargained for when they enter _minds_," he said. "Now let's see. That's two weeks of nightmares, dozens of games..."

I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach.

"No…" I said.

"Afraid so," he said.

"_No_!"

"Hah!" he said."You can't stop yourself, can you?"

I didn't reply.

"Can you? Hah---hahaha! That _s-s-s-succulent_ connection with a living body. So addictive when you're dead…"

Tash must have felt my shoulders tense as he massaged them, because his laughter became shriller. He swept my vision of Charn aside as if he was parting curtains, and I found myself in a dark room with a single window. A seagull called. Morning.

"…Or did you forget where you were?" Tash said.

I looked down. Edmund's face had softened in sleep, and he breathed softly in a regular rhythm that seemed to fit the sea breeze from the window. And Tash was right—he felt _alive._

"No more games," I said.

The laughter stopped.

"As you wish," Tash said.

And then his claws broke through my skin.

"Of course, that would spoil my plans…" he said.

Pain through my shoulder. I felt something like worms sliding under my skin and poking their heads between my muscles.

"So I'd need a little _extra recreation_ to cheer up again..." he continued.

_Don't cry out…_

Tash scratched his head and furrowed his brow as if deep in thought. A pause. The pain continued. He clapped and twined his right foot around his left. More laughter.

"Oh," he said. "I know…I _knowIknowIknowIknow_!"

"What are you going to do?" I said. "You can't threaten me with—"

"I can always play with Iaida, can't I?" Tash said.

* * *

I found Edmund in Felimath's main courthouse. He traded angry whispers with a pair of hungry-looking men in gray robes. Every so often, Fyren would scowl after Edmund had spoken and whisper something back that I couldn't hear.

Perhaps a dozen people stood in chains. Some were men; most women. Seven bore Tash's mark. As I passed through their bodies, I felt hot iron and stretched joints and water.

Well, well. Edmund's protests had failed, and the Sigerites had arrived in Felimath after all.

An odd sect, all things considered. As far as I knew—and honestly, I didn't care at the time—Saint Siger's brotherhood had fled to the Narnian rimland during my reign. After I fed Siger to my wolves, his followers had hired themselves out in Galma as witchfinders. In the century that followed, they had become very, very good at it. Caer Paravel's synod considered them heretics.

I moved closer.

"Fyren, they're torturing suspects," Edmund said. "You think I can't recognize the signs?"

The rings around his eyes had deepened and darkened, but at least he couldn't blame _me_ this time. Fyren responded to Edmund's complaint with a royal shrug.

"State security," Fyren said.

He said it as if that explained everything, and it should have. Unfortunately, Edmund was always an idealistic fool.

"I won't consent to this."

The newly minted King of Felimath smirked.

"So you keep saying," Fyren said. "Unfortunately, it's _my_ territory, my men outnumber yours four-to-one, the people support me...Oh, and there's the minor detail that witches are _killing our soldiers_."

Fyren's voice had become a low growl. Edmund plowed forward anyway.

"Not for long," he said. "Lucy and Peter are coming in the spring."

The threat was obvious, but Fyren didn't miss a beat.

"Susan's coming too."

"She wouldn't approve of this," Edmund said.

Fyren inhaled slowly and tightened his fingers around the armrest. His leather glove squeaked.

"By the time Susan arrives, _King _Edmund, Felimath's witch population will be rotting in mass graves."

* * *

I waited until the trial had ended and Edmund had retreated to his room. He locked the door and sagged into a chair near the chessboard. A pile of vellum rested nearby, where the Just King had scrawled notes in the margins of old cases against the Sigerites. The quill still rested in a jar of red ink, so he must not have found what he was looking for.

Once in a while, he cast a sheepish glance at the bed before he pulled himself away again—always back to the notes…and the game. He clicked a chesspiece on the table and muttered 'solutions' to himself. Most involved killing Fyren in a duel. None were practical.

"Well?" Tash said.

I sat across from Edmund. He must have heard the chair creak, since he looked up with a start. The rook fell from his hand. I caught it.

"Hello, Edmund," I said.

"Hello, Jadis."

"You look terrible."

He still stared at the board, but I saw a smile. Oh, so faint. I noticed that three days of stubble had accumulated on his chin.

"You know," he said. "I kinda prefer you to Fyren."

"Oh?"

"You're honest," he said. "Well…not _honest_ honest, exactly, but—"

He sighed.

"Never mind," he said.

"I have no illusions about myself," I said. "Is that what you mean?"

Edmund nodded.

"You're predictable," he said. "Self-interested. You're not a fanatic."

"And Fyren is?" I said.

Edmund laughed. It was bitter and died quickly.

"They _all_ are," he said. "Oh, the humans in Narnia _seem _normal enough on the surface, but when you start peeling the layers..."

He stopped. I raised an eyebrow.

"Tell me about humans on your world, then," I said.

Edmund flicked the king off the board. The ivory head snapped when it hit the floor.

"No," he said. "On second thought, I'm _not_ going to share my life with a mass murderer. I made a deal that I'd finish your game, and I will. That's where my obligation ends."

Edmund sat back and rolled the queen in his hand. That was when I _knew_. I'd told myself for months that I would always stay one step ahead of him—that I'd wriggle out of whatever situation he'd put me in just as I'd done throughout my life. Not now.

He'd win. Now…later…_eventually_, Edmund would win.

"Reminds me of a certain Charnian princess…" Tash said.

I scowled, and realized that I hadn't planned to.

"So that's _it_?" I snapped.

Edmund gave me a bewildered look. I can't say I blamed him.

"Huh?"

"You killed me once and you're planning to finish the job," I said. "Is that it?"

Edmund's face remained impassive. Not a single twitch out of place.

"Yes."

"All right," I said. "But think about _this_, Edmund: What ran through your mind before Aslan's rabble rescued you?"

His body tensed.

"Well?" I said. "Never mind. We both know the answer. You wanted to know _WHY_ you were going to die."

I waited. He nodded.

"…And now the shoe's on the other foot," Edmund finished.

As always, he learned quickly.

"I think I have a right to know my executioner," I said.

Edmund continued to roll that infernal chesspiece in his hand, following its progress with his eyes in slow swings from left to right. He started to sigh, but cut it short.

"No," he said. "I don't owe you anything."

"You're—"

"I'm not finished_,_" he said. "I'll tell you what you want to know_, _but your 'rights' have nothing to do with it. This is _charity_."

I bit back a retort and gave him a tiny nod—just barely perceptible, but Edmund didn't rub it in by asking for clarification. Always _polite_, you see. Aslan's little paladin.

"All right," he said. "Let's play."

I beat him. It didn't matter. When we'd finished, he gave me some trivia about "factories" that might have interested me under different circumstances. He fell asleep, retreating into his mind before another legal battle with Fyren. I didn't follow him.


	14. Chapter 13: Edmund

**Chapter 13: Edmund**

* * *

Like other crimes, _maleficia_ must be proved with two witnesses or a confession. Yet witchcraft is an invisible crime; its operations occur far from villages, in the dead of night, and through the operations of spirits that can melt into the air. An inquisitor must therefore abandon witnesses and place his trust in confessions. We shall now enumerate several methods of persuasion that do not leave obvious wounds, but which nevertheless produce the desired effects...

-- From the Sigerite manuscript _Directorium Inquisitorum_

_

* * *

_

Fyren's men panted behind me. Steam formed from their breaths, but it was the sound that worried me. Even in the moonlight, no one could see the wisps of steam. After a few days in Narnia, you learn just how dark a world without electricity can get. Witches don't dance under Zardeenah's Moon because they like the atmosphere. Moonless nights need too many torches, and torches bring visitors.

Like us.

We'd been climbing Felimath's Great Crag for an hour, and hadn't lost anyone yet. That was no mean accomplishment. We'd discovered broken bodies at the Crag's base, which meant that a few of our opponents had slipped on moss or slush. Once in a while, I heard a stifled cry when someone's numb fingers missed a handhold. And the rocks cut. Most of us were bleeding. I remembered the days on Earth when I'd complained during a hike up the local hill. Somehow, though, the contrast didn't seem funny.

Jadis floated alongside me, wearing her perpetual smirk.

"Almost there," Fyren whispered.

And we were. I heard ululating cries that reminded me of Algerian women in a newsreel I'd seen once. I checked for the tenth time to make sure I'd blackened my sword enough that it wouldn't reflect any light. Good. One of the men tossed something over the cliff. When I didn't hear an impact, I exhaled.

"Pickled sheep's foot," Jadis said. "He's been nibbling on it for half an hour, in case you wondered."

I didn't. An animal bellowed a short distance ahead.

"Swords out," Fyren said. "They're sacrificing the bull."

A figure stood at the summit, and the fire at the Crag's center painted her orange and black. Three arrows and a knife caught her before she could cry out, and the body tumbled as soundlessly as the sheep's foot had done. We filed behind the rocks.

As soon as I peeked over a boulder, I realized that I had been wrong. The orange glow hadn't come from a central fire, but a thousand candle wicks that hovered a yard above the ground. The mist around them reflected the moonlight, so that the entire scene reminded me of lightning bugs flying through foxfire. The bull was already dead. Its carcass rested on an altar.

Pale bodies danced between the lights. They clasped hands in a long chain and threaded their way way around the wicks without touching them. Snakelike, almost.

Fyren pointed.

"Behind the altar," he said.

That's when I saw the dog. Large. Bear-sized. Worshipers clustered around him and performed rituals that I won't describe in detail.

"Tash," Fyren said.

I nodded and mumbled something like "yeah". Jadis's breathing quickened behind me. I wondered why I'd noticed, and explained it to myself as another symptom of the hypersensitivity that always comes before violence.

_Five..._

Bows bent. Arrows notched. Swords out.

_Four..._

Arms rose and fell in unison. The dance continued. A fleshy woman hammered a drum.

_Three..._

A goat bleated. The second sacrifice. Shadows passed over the dog's face. His fur gave off an oily shine in the firelight.

_Two..._

A woman held something white and polished over her head. I squinted. Jadis sneered.

"A child's bone," she said.

_One..._

"Peasant magic," she continued. "They substitute sacrifices for skill. Pathetic. I wouldn--"

"Now!" I shouted.

Twenty men rose and fired their first volley into the crowd. Screams of pain and surprise. The dog rose on his hind legs and growled at me, while all around us, the candle wicks vanished as if someone had turned a switch.

"Torches!" Fyren yelled.

Ten globs of pitch and straw burned to life. Their flickering caught our enemies halfway through their transformations. Men stared at us through cats' eyes. Women bared fangs at us that stretched past their chins. We fired two more volleys, and heard half-animal howls in response. The survivors fled to the far side of the Crag and leaped off. Their bodies shrunk. Their arms thinned and hardened as gossamer wings sprouted from their backs. Within a few moments, a swarm of flies had buzzed out of Fyren's reach.

...But not mine. Tash's servants lived far away from Narnia and its Talking Beasts. The night had always sheltered their activities from human eyes, but they had forgotten that Narnian kings employed servants who could spot their gatherings better than any human.

* * *

I can't tell you what happened next, because I was too far away to see the battle or hear the squeaks and fluttering of wings. All I can report was the aftermath, when Percival DeWinter alighted on my shoulder with a full belly.

"All dead?" Fyren said.

Percy shrugged his wings and flashed Fyren a smile. A thicket of white needles.

"Most of them," he said. "My bats'll take care of the rest."

Fyren frowned.

"_Most_ of them?" he said.

Percy preened his chest and claws. He replied in that precise, overly enunciated tone that he saved for correcting young bats during their first flight.

"That _was_ the first part of my statement, Majesty. However, I should like to draw your attention to my _subsequent clarification_, where I made it clear that the--ahem--_remainder _will be dealt with in due _time_."

I should add that Percy had kept me updated on Fyren's interrogations. He'd assumed the responsibility because, as he put it, "It would not bode well for morale if my subordinates observed the activities of our--hem--_allies_."

Fortunately, Fyren hadn't lived in Narnia long enough to learn animal expressions. Bats--Percy included--usually do not bare their teeth.

"Permission to continue the hunt, Majesty?" Percy said.

I granted it. As Percy flew off, Fyren stepped over the pincushioned bodies and passed the torch over each of them in turn. He peered into each face as if he was looking for something, and then his muscles would relax again.

"Looking for somebody?" I said.

Fyren wheeled around.

"What?" he said.

"What are you doing?"

His fingers stiffened around the torch.

"I...I'm counting the dead," he said. "Seventy-one so far."

"It can wait until morning," I said. "The bats haven't come back yet, remember?"

He seemed to consider this for a moment, and then nodded.

"King Edmund, you're...er...interested in old things?" he said.

"Eh?"

Fyren nodded toward a clay pit. A few of his men were sitting on its edge, feet dangling. Beyond them, I could see the outlines of a cistern.

"From the ancient days," Fyren said. "When Felimath's people still hunted unicorns and sold their horns to the Calormenes, my ancestors used this place for ceremonies to Tash. Rituals like this one. Made the sheep grow fat and the fish breed."

Fyren shrugged.

"...So they thought, anyway," he said.

I watched the flame dance at the end of his arm for a while longer. It was better than seeing the half-human bodies all around us, at any rate. More nightmares tonight...

He turned to go.

"Fyren?" I said.

"Yes?"

"We got most of them tonight."

"I suppose," he said.

"Your witch-hunt isn't necessary anymore," I said. "You'd just kill more innocent people."

Fyren shrugged his broad shoulders.

"We'll see," he said.

* * *

When Fyren had wandered off, I lay down and huddled into a ball against the cold. Jadis sat beside me.

"It becomes easier, you know..." she said.

I almost laughed, but nobody would have heard me anyway. Like me, most of Fyren's men had curled up and were pretending to sleep while their fellows stood guard. The triumph of optimism over experience. My hands were still shaking.

"Easier?" I said. "How can this possibly get easier?"

Jadis shrugged and traced spirals in the dirt.

"You learn to _feel _less," she said.

I didn't reply.

"Edmund?"

"What?"

"Fyren won't stop the trials," she said. "Your little expedition tonight didn't change anything."

"Shut up," I muttered.

I'd said it in a bleary mumble, as if I could convince myself that I was half asleep. It didn't work. I could hear the smile in Jadis's voice.

"Did you ever watch Sigerites at work?" she said. "Fascinating, really. They can do marvelous things with water and a few ropes. Especially water..."

"_Please_ shut up," I said.

"You can stop him," she said. "Just ask me. Nicely, of course."

I turned over and opened my eyes. Jadis wore a red brooch whose facets reflected my face back at me.

"No," I said. "There'd be civil war--"

She laughed.

"Who said anything about killing him?" she said. "I'm just offering you information, little king."

I rolled my eyes and turned away. The mud was cold, and it smeared onto the back of my shirt.

"Not interested," I said.

"It _will _work," she said. "I swear it on the Deep Magic."

Information. Not a spell. And lots of people saved. Alarm bells went off in my head immediately. It was too textbook, like the plot of one of the fairy stories my parents had read to me when I was young. The evil gnome or wizard would always ask for such a _little_ thing...

...Narnia, though, was never a fairy tale. Innocent people died.

"What do you want in return?" I said.

Jadis licked her lips and smiled.

"Well?" I snapped.

"Two hours in your memories," she said. "I'll even stay out of places where you don't want me."

"It'll stop the trials?" I said.

"Guaranteed."

"And it's not magic?" I said.

"A political move," she said. "Nothing more."

I opened my mouth to voice another objection, but Jadis cut me off with a raised hand.

"I'll only collect my price _after_ you've followed my advice," she said. "If you listen to my idea and choose not to use it, the deal's off with...ah...what's the phrase your people use? 'With no hard feelings'."

I remembered the first witch I'd seen burned. It had happened in Archenland during a diplomatic mission when I was eleven. I'd wondered at first whether she was innocent or guilty.

_A real witch?_ I'd thought. _Like in the history books?_

Yes, as it turned out; _just_ like the history books. The bloody, violent, plague-filled history books. As I'd watched her walk to the stake_--_head shaved, crying, praying--I'd stopped wondering whether she was a "real" witch or not.

"Let's hear your idea," I said.

And Jadis told me.


	15. Chapter 14: Jadis

**Chapter 14: Jadis**

_Lessons. Military, of course. My first with boys my own age. My stomach has tied itself into dainty knots for months at this prospect. I stumble into the room just in time to avoid a caning. …_

"_Sit," our tutor says._

_I do._

_Our tutor talks about the men of the Adohi Basgim:_

_Their heralds carried a sword and a white staff, symbolizing their enemies' alternatives. _

_Their king's banner was a yellow lion on a green satin field. _

_Their armies traveled in _catha_ of three thousand men. _

_Their women screamed when our armies killed their husbands and took their children into slavery._

_Questions follow, rapid-fire. Our tutor calls on each of us in turn. When a boy ahead of me answers, his voice cracks. A strange sound. I haven't heard it before, and. I try not to giggle. The prospect of getting beaten helps enormously in this regard._

"_Jadis."_

_I jolt upright._

"_Sir?"_

"_Describe the purpose of a battle-book."_

"_The armies of Adohi Basgim carried these books as talismans," I said. "Each clan had its own relic, which they kept in boxes gilt with silver…"_

_As I recite the lesson, I look at the boy who nearly made me laugh. I notice brown eyes. He's thin, and blushes. I smile at him. He blushes more._

_

* * *

_

"_We flirted, you know," Linshiol says. _

_I stare out the window of our carriage. A peasant girl stoops as she picks a shrub or weed or something. She wears a blue dress and an apron that was once white. Pretty, too: not much older than I am, and the sun hasn't turned her face into leather yet. A good find: I'm surprised our overseer hasn't sold her yet. I'll speak to him about it in the morning…_

"_Jadis, you're not listening."_

"_Flirting," I said. "Something about flirting."_

"_With Brin," she said._

"_Who?"_

_Linshiol giggles and pokes me on the arm._

"_Tall, dark, and bashful," she says. "Brown eyes. Skinny. Ring any bells?"_

"_Um…"_

_She sighs theatrically._

"_Oh dear, Jadis…What am I going to do with you? You spend half an hour trading looks with some boy and you don't even know his—"_

"_I wasn't trading anything!" I say._

_She raises an eyebrow._

"_Sure you weren't."_

_

* * *

_

At this point, I sped up the vision. Linshiol's prodding and competition did more for Brin's prospects than his own assets ever could have. His bashfulness became _unfathomably_ deep and sensitive. Cute brown eyes transmuted into "shining amber orbs" or something equally idiotic during my attempts at love poetry. When he talked to me for a few minutes, I decided that he _must_ love me. I dropped a book so that he'd pick it up for me, and he did. How chivalrous. How gentlemanly. When I learned that he came from minor nobility, I wasn't deterred. Oh, no….our story would be Como and Cinilla all over again, complete with happy ending.

Typical drivel.

And then, Linshiol broke the news that Brin was betrothed to someone else. His family had arranged it, of course: Charnian nobles didn't breed for love like peasants do.

* * *

"_But he loved __me__!" I shout._

_Linshiol plays with her cup-and-ball. The ball arcs too wide until the string arrests its motion. It clicks against the side of the cup. _

"_Guess not," she says. _

_And then my half-sister smiles. _

"_Or not enough, anyway."_

_I imagine Brin walking hand in hand with his new wife. And in __bed__ together…Or what I imagine "in bed" means at fourteen. She'll curl up in those lithe arms of his and..._

_Lionshiol shrugs._

"_Best thing, really," she says. "Father wouldn't have stood for it."_

_As soon as I hear those words, a plan forms in my mind. _

_It's incredibly stupid. Within a week, Brin is arrested. My love potions still addle his mind when they feed him to Father's jackals. _

_The last thing he says is my name._

_

* * *

_

"I never took you for a masochist," Tash said. "Sadist, perhaps…"

"I find this interesting," I said. "That's all."

Tash formed a picture frame with the thumbs and forefingers of two of his hands. I saw a room through the gap, as if his fingers framed a little window hovering in front of his chest.

I looked through it and saw a room of red granite with a pit in the center. On the pit's rim, a young girl struggled with two men. She had her hair long and wore the heavy makeup of a Charnian woman, but the bony leg that poked through her dress betrayed her age. Still mostly a child. She reached for the railings, and screamed when they pulled her back. The boy in the pit didn't make a sound. On the walls, the torches drew shadows of jackals eating.

"This'll be your first room when you come back to us," Tash said. "I've recreated it all perfectly so you'll feel at home."

_Relax…_

"Why did you come?" I said.

"If you're _quite_ finished feeling sorry for yourself, I have a job for you," Tash said.

"The _aenach_ festival?"

He nodded.

"We'll see if Edmund puts your information to good use," he said.

"_Your_ information," I said.

"Same thing."

"Just what _exactly_ are you hoping to accomplish with this?" I said.

Tash just chuckled.

* * *

Fyren had spent the first day of Felimath's _Féis _with the usual. He announced new laws, judged property disputes, performed marriages and collected taxes. Fyren and Edmund jointly attended the _Rélta na bh-filedh_, and even I had to admit that the poetry made the trip worthwhile.

Then the fun began.

A pit, perhaps fifty square feet, lay in the center of the tent; I recognized its purpose before Edmund did. He focused on the timpans, pipes, and harps; or perhaps on the masked gleemen as they ogled the crowd. Poor fool probably thought he'd stumbled into another theatrical performance. He'd never seen the Lone Islands' uglier amusements.

Fyren sipped his mead, rolling the golden ring in his palm that he would present to the winner of the evening's events.

I watched the crowd. Clans from throughout Felimath had sworn the sacred armistice, but they'd still separated themselves into betting pools. The tent grew warm from the body heat and breath. More of them stood outside. They jostled, pushed, and swore. Fyren shook the _craebh sida_ —a yew branch with silver bells attached.

"We begin," he said.

Two groups entered the ring. At the head of each group, a man cradled an agitated rooster in a wicker cage. The birds carried blades at the ends of their feet, attached with lengths of string. They screeched and struggled with their owners as soon as they saw each other. I caught myself casting a professional eye over the proceedings, and smiled at myself.

Fyren tipped a tiny hourglass. The gong sounded, and I reflected that it was a pity that I had to pay attention to Edmund. When you've raised fighting birds as I have, you learn to appreciate these things.

"Do you know why my countrymen watch this, King Edmund?" Fyren said.

Wings beat. Feathers flew. Beaks and blades sought for openings as the animals ripped into each other. Edmund didn't take his eyes from them.

"No," he said.

Fyren gripped his goblet more tightly. In that moment, the smaller bird dug its blade into the other's heart. The owner snatched it away, lest it receive the return blow. Fyren tipped a second, larger hourglass that I guessed would take about two minutes before the next round began.

"Because they're barbarians," Fyren said. "My people hate your Talking Beasts."

Fyren swept his hand across the scene. The owners blew into their birds' mouths, cleaned up their blood, and prodded their wounds with homemade medicines.

"They watch Dumb Beasts tear each other to pieces so that they can convince themselves that they're different from the animals," Fyren said. "A blood sacrifice."

"And you want to stop it?" Edmund said.

"I do."

The birds locked again. More pecking and slashing followed. This time, the larger animal found its mark. The blade cut deep, and the "winner" jerked around on one foot while the metal remained embedded in its adversary's chest.

"Forgive me if I'm not convinced," Edmund said.

Fyren set his goblet down and lowered his voice to a whisper. His tone intensified; the words came out as a hiss.

"Believe what you like," he said. "You think I'm using Susan? Fine. I admit it. She understood that from the moment we met, just as I understood that she wanted to bring the Lone Islands back under Narnian rule."

Fyren leaned closer, and his robe flowed over the arm of his throne. He spoke faster now. The judges declared the larger bird the winner. The owner of the losing bird threw the carcass on the ground and wept.

"But I _do_ love her," Fyren said. "And if I need to exterminate every yarb doctor, Tash worshipper, and healer in the entire island to keep her safe, then I'll do it. You didn't grow up in my father's court, so you don't understand what Tash's scum did to this place. The Lone Islands will be like Narnia someday, King Edmund. They will be _clean_."

Pause. A breath. Fyren withdrew. Edmund deliberately wiped a fleck of saliva that had landed on his cheek. Now both birds had expired. I heard the jingle of coins changing hands.

"You're finished?" Edmund said.

"I'm finished."

"Good," Edmund said. "Now it's my turn. I can't control my sister. If she wants to marry you, I can't stop her without risking civil war. And realistically speaking, I can't prevent you from murdering your own people after I leave."

The ends of Fyren's mouth curled upward.

"But I _can_ enforce the witchcraft laws while I'm here."

Fyren's smile vanished.

"What do you mean?" he said.

"We both know about your mother's…religious views," Edmund said. "Ironic that you've burned so many innocent people when you've got a witch under your own roof, don't you think?"

"How did you find out—"

Edmund held up a hand. His voice took an unnaturally calm pitch.

"Never mind how I know," he said. "I do. And unless you want the Sigerites to find out about her after we win, I advise you to stop these purges _immediately_."

"You wouldn't dare," Fyren said.

Now Edmund leaned forward until his face almost touched Fyren's.

"Wouldn't I?" he said. "You think I wouldn't execute a _known enemy_ after I've stood aside while you massacred people? Think again."

Fyren's face had turned red, and his hand shook. He squeezed the arm of his throne until I could hear the wood grind.

"My mother's life to save a pack of murderers," he said.

"No," Edmund said. "A murderer's life to save hundreds of innocent people."

The Just King stood up and raised his goblet before tipping it over. The mead sloshed at Fyren's feet.

"Your national sport is disgusting," Edmund said. "Don't invite me again."

He turned an over-elaborate bow, and after he'd finished, he threw aside the tent's curtains and walked into the sunlight.

* * *

"Good bluff," I said.

Edmund's eyes didn't leave the ground.

"_Was_ it a bluff?" he said.

I rolled my eyes.

"Spare me your self-flagellation, little king. It's indulgent, and it doesn't become you."

He didn't answer.

"We both know that you wouldn't do it," I said. "Not that you'll need to. Fyren will back down."

"It was cowardly to threaten him like that," he said.

I laughed.

"All right then, little king," I said. "I'll play. The threat was necessary. It's your _guilt_ that's cowardly. A Charnian prince wouldn't have thought twice about carrying out what you promised."

I brushed a strand of hair from his forehead and sighed.

"There's time yet, I suppose," I said.

I traced a circle on his head with my finger. His life-force crackled as my hand passed. It felt like hundreds of tiny needles arranged in a bed, each placed so closely to its neighbor that the points can't penetrate the skin. A snippet of his memory brushed past my cheek. And another. My heartbeat quickened.

_Life…_

Edmund stopped.

"You want your payment," he said.

"Yes," I said. "_Soon_."

"Give me an hour."


	16. Chapter 15: Edmund

**Chapter 15: Edmund**

I'd promised an hour and it took me three. I returned late at night—long after my generals had left my monastery headquarters. I heard the bats squeak while they hung along the roof outside, and felt their wings flutter near my cheek as I entered. As I latched the door, I silently debated whether to thank Percy in the morning or scold him as an overprotective busybody. Not much of a choice, really: if I complained, he'd just puff out his fuzzy chest and give me one of his dutiful oh-what-I-put-up-with-from-my-sovereign looks. Nobody could pull off wounded nobility better than that that little rodent.

I saw light through a crack in the cellar door. As I stepped down the ladder, I let the wood rasp across my hand rather than release the door in a single jerk. I didn't want noise.

"You're late."

I had to squint to see her at first. Jadis sat in a crevice at least a foot away from the outer extremity of candle's field of light. She'd crossed her legs tailor-style, like one of those Indian yogis in film reels back home. Only her feet fell within the firelight. They were bare, and not as pale as I remembered them.

"Sit," she said.

The ground looked dry enough, so I pushed the dust to one side with my boot and sank to my knees. My gear clanked. The sound was amplified in those close quarters, and evoked feelings of guilt, or trespass, or something like that—like the times that you sneeze during a ceremony. Jadis's hand entered the light, and it, too, seemed less bleached than I remembered. She scratched designs in the sand with her fingernail. Some looked like eyes, others like spirals, and a few like aimless doodles, as if someone had dropped a length black thread on a piece of paper and traced the result. Once in a while, she scratched deeper than usual, and the furrow would reveal moist soil underneath the dust.

Jadis sniffed.

"You've been drinking," she said.

"Yes."

She didn't look up from the drawing, but her hand stopped moving.

"Drunk?" she said.

"Of course not."

"Good," she said. "Too much would have interfered."

"Mm," I said. "And we wouldn't want that, would we?"

She didn't reply. A triskelion wheel took shape. Each spoke had the head of a cat; when the flame sputtered, their faces seemed to squirm. Jadis took more care with these than the previous drawings, and leaned closer as she drew. That's when I noticed.

"You're younger."

Her eyebrows were knitted as she dotted a cat's eye _just_ so.

"Hm?" she said. "Oh, that. Yes."

_scritch—scritch—scritch _…

The wheels looked like they were moving, but reset every time I blinked. The longer I looked at them, the more I felt tingling in my arms and legs—halfway between excitement and the limpness that comes before drifting off.

Jadis slapped my hand. It was as if I'd woken up.

"Don't stare at them," she said.

I forced my eyes to wander to the barrels of salted pork, the wine casks, and the strings of dried vegetables that hung between the walls. The drawings beckoned, though…

"It will ease the journey," Jadis said.

She'd spoken rather quickly.

"Huh?"

Another slap on the hand. Another jolt into wakefulness.

"You can't drift off yet," she said. "So, then….you asked why I appear as I do."

"Ehm…?"

She leaned into the light, and I remembered. Still thin—even thinner than before, perhaps, but gangly; an adolescent's awkwardness. Her skin had a hint of yellowish-tan underneath the pallor, like a woman from the Levant who'd spent most of her life indoors. The deserts from her memories sprang to my mind again. Her eyes were brown.

"The deepest parts of your mind fear me," she said, "And they should. But they fear me less when I wear my younger self like a cloak."

"A lie," I said.

"A lie," she agreed.

And then she smirked. She cupped my chin with her hand. I hadn't shaved in a day or two (three?), and the mud smeared itself between the stubble.

"Besides," she said. "It _unnerves_ you so…"

I pulled away.

"Are you ready?" I said.

The hand withdrew. It alighted again on my forehead.

"Yes," she said.

The world blinked.

* * *

I woke up somewhere grey. It took me a few seconds to realize that this meant 'home'. Four children skipped along a sidewalk while their mother trailed behind. Her high heels clacked—not that I could hear it well with the honking horns and pedestrians shouting. Glossy red billboards peddled whatever. I smelled gasoline.

No. I should rephrase that: I was _choked_ with gasoline. After years of adjusting to the smell of horse manure in the streets, I'd imagined London as a sort of stench-less childhood paradise. I'd been wrong.

I dodged a man selling newspapers only to run into a woman with impossibly bright lipstick. No matter; she passed through me. A man dressed in a uniform followed her. Although they were incorporeal, the pedestrians were not transparent. Their bodies blocked my vision when they walked through me. That's when I realized that I'd lost Jadis in the stream of people.

"Here," she said.

Despite the noise, her voice had sounded as if she'd spoken into my ear. I turned and saw a girl standing under a lamppost. She wasn't hard to find, really. Even without the conspicuousness of her jeweled cloak, Jadis stood a head taller than most of the people around her. She stared at the lamppost with an odd smile on her face, and crossed her arms over her chest like a wife waiting for a husband's explanation.

"What are you-"

"What's that?" she said, and pointed.

I followed her finger to the street, where a cabby and a man wearing a bowler quarreled about the fee. I remembered my leggings and mail shirt, and thanked the fates that I wasn't really walking through London.

"We pay for transportation," I said. "Most people don't have drivers—"

"I meant the carriages," she said.

"The cars? Oh, they run without horses."

Jadis rolled her eyes.

"I can _see _that," she said. "I meant…Never mind. I'll see for myself."

She sighed, and I felt memories fly through my consciousness rapid-fire, as if someone had filed every fact I knew and turned them into a flip-book. Stranger still, I heard some of her thoughts as she saw them. Curiosity. Impatience.

She stopped. Confusion.

_Automatons? _she thought.

A picture of an engine. Burnished steel. Speed. Faster than a horse could run.

_But surely, a magician could…_

Beakers. Math problems on chalkboards. Gunpowder rockets, clockwork gears, and all the other paraphernalia my ten-year-old mind had associated with science.

_I don't…_

_What?_

Jadis's eyes snapped back to me.

"You have no magic here," she said. "You follow _tinkers_ who build toys in their workshops and call it wisdom."

"I guess so," I said.

A pause followed, and then she giggled. It took me a moment to realize what had happened. It had sounded girlish, happy…normal. Completely unlike Jadis. Effects of the younger body, I guess.

"So old Andrew was your world's last sorcerer?" she said.

"I don't see the joke," I said.

"No matter," Jadis said. "I wouldn't have expected you to."

She spread her arms wide, sweeping across the streets with the gesture.

"And this is your capital?" she said.

"Yes."

"An ugly place," she said. "You'd—"

Her eye caught the skyline, where a building stood out against the setting sun's haze. Once again, my memories jumped eagerly through her mind.

_A hundred feet high…no…two hundred. Three?_

Annoyance.

_Supports…like a ziggurat or cathedral, perhaps?_

Frustration.

_NO supports?_

Jadis glared at me.

"How do they do that?" she said.

"I dunno."

She jabbed her finger at the offending building. Not _angry _exactly: More like Susan during one of her "moods" as a child, when she didn't get what she wanted from mother and couldn't understand why.

"What do you mean you don't know?" she said. "This is your world."

"How could I?" I said. "I'm not an engineer. I was ten, remember?"

Jadis stared at me for a moment or two longer, as if I'd divulge the answer if she'd just give me a bit more time. She nibbled her lip, then shook her head and waved me away.

"Never mind," she said. "Doesn't matter."

We walked a few more steps. Jadis searched the face of each woman as they passed. Wisps of her thoughts touched mine, and my curiosity was dispelled: she was trying to work out the contents of their cosmetics.

"They all wear them," she said. "And of high quality. How can you afford—Oh."

Flashes from my memories now, sometimes with facts I'd only heard once: Tax rates. The British Empire. Industry. Economic depression. Trade with India. The population of the world is now…

_Two billion? _

Disbelief. More searching.

_But that's…_

Charn. Her memories now.

_Census said a hundred million. Double the figure to account for incompetence, halve it again to discount areas beyond our effective control...  
_

Cheated.

_A twentieth?_

_That can't...But Father conquered so much…_

My consciousness met hers somewhere along the way, and I backed off when she noticed it. She looked down at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Your smugness is not appreciated," she said.

"Who, me?" I said. "The king of a half million illiterate farmers?"

She stopped walking when I said that, so I passed her by. The boy scurried along between his sisters. Each of them held one of his hands and swung them back and forth. And the fourth child? Up in front, of course. Always the odd man out, was Peter.

"I realized what I dislike about your world," Jadis said.

"Oh?"

She sauntered beside a man in a long black coat who swung an umbrella back and forth in front of him. The swing was regular, like a pendulum. Forward-stop-click-backward-stop. Jadis waved her hand in front of his face.

"No horses," she said. "You're all like your machines—eyes straight ahead, no talking. Where are the animals?"

"Where are our whips?" I shot back. "Have you noticed any?"

Jadis tilted her head to one side.

"What do you mean?"

The man kept walking until his face passed through her hand. A thought occurred to me: if we were walking on concrete, then perhaps the inanimate objects weren't as incorporeal as the people.

"In Charn, what did you do when a horse wouldn't pull its weight?" I said.

"Beat it," she said. "You hinted as much yourself. What's your point?"

"And the same applies to humans?" I said.

Her eyes narrowed.

"You remind me of our teachers," she said. "They were all little men who complicated simple matters. _Obviously_ the same principle applies to humans. A noblewoman loves her serfs just like she loves her horses, but both sometimes need correc-"

_THUNK!_

When I kicked the car, Jadis backed away slightly as if she'd expected it to kick back. She disguised the movement well: a backward step became an appraising glance, and she put her hands on her hips.

"You can beat humans and horses to make them work faster," I said. "You can't beat a machine. If an engine breaks down, you have to _think_. That's why the people in Narnia are still barbarians who burn witches and let their children die of exposure near the faerie mounds when they think they're changelings."

Jadis opened her mouth, and then closed it again. The respite only lasted an instant or two before another smirk crossed her face.

"You don't include yourself and your siblings among those barbarians, _King_ Edmund?" she said.

"Of course I do," I said. "And when the whole thing collapses on Doomsday, I'll be there to die with the rest of them."

Her smile evaporated.

"You're joking about things you don't understand," she said.

"I'm not joking," I said. "Why? Is there something I don't know?"

_King Edmund!_

I looked around for the source of the voice. Jadis's nose wrinkled as she sneered.

_King Edmund! Wake up…_

"What's going on?" I said.

"Too early," she snapped. "You didn't lock the door. They're waking you up."

_My lord…Your brother and sisters have landed! Wake-_

The voices came from the end of the street. I stepped toward them until Jadis caught me by the shoulder and spun me around.

"You _promised_," she said. "I need—"

"You'll get it," I said. "With interest. Another hour, right?"

She exhaled. Her grip loosened.

"But I need to go," I said. "Now."

"So go," she said.

* * *

All around me, London melted like a watercolor in the rain. When I opened my eyes, I felt dirt on my face, but the spells had already vanished from the floor. The stench of gasoline had also faded; instead, I smelled dried fruit, mildew, and the sweat of bodies crammed into a cellar. There they were: retainers, talking squirrels, the margraves from the Telmarine border, bats, cheetahs, mice, and everything in between. The centaurs waited on the floor above us.

And Jadis, of course. The color and youth had left her cheeks, and she watched me through those black-in-black eyes that reminded me of a snake's. As I climbed the ladder, I looked for a centaur who wore a lock of his hair in the curled ringlet that denoted a chieftain's son. I found one.

"They're here?" I said.

He nodded.

"Just landed, Majesty," he said. "High King Peter wants a family meeting."

I clapped him on the shoulder and willed more energy into my aching legs. Kings, you see, walk with a spring in their step.

"That makes four of us," I said. "Lead me to them."


	17. Chapter 16: Jadis

**Chapter 16: Jadis**

The old king's lab smelled of sulfur. It was private; all four Pevensies must have known that Fyren wouldn't venture inside that place. I remembered King Orry's complaints about his son: that the boy wouldn't mix metals for this Stone or that Elixir when the old man ordered him to. Even as a child - even when my reign had reached its zenith - Fyren's sympathies had lain with Aslan's Narnia.

Fool.

Homunculi stared out of their jars—long dead, obviously, but their eyes still stared. The eyes themselves were yellow and unblinking, and they sat above pinhole nostrils. The overall effect reminded me of dried fish, or mandrake roots with pruny skin. Dust had accumulated on the surface of the bottles, but I could still sense a certain wrongness in the juxtaposition: wrinkled skin and cold glass.

The High King was at the table's head. Mirrors of polished copper hung at regular intervals behind him.

"Right," he said. "To business."

Edmund gritted his teeth every time a chair creaked or a gnat buzzed too near and squealed in his ear. Susan breathed quickly, and the cellar's air turned her breath to frost. It puffed in a cloud, like the fumes from Edmund's moving carriages. I didn't begrudge them their jumpiness.

"Su…don't marry this man."

Susan glared at Edmund. Her hands were crossed over her chest, and she rubbed them forward and back on her arms, where fanciful animals ran down the sleeves. They were stitched in that indifferent Narnian manner: red goats that turned purple as the seamstress exhausted her supply of red thread.

"A bit late _now_, Ed, don't you think?"

"I told you before, didn't I?" Edmund said. "The man's done nothing but murder people since I've come here. And he did it in _your_ name, I might add—"

"Ed!" Lucy gasped. "Don't be horrid."

A white shape flitted across one of the copper mirrors. I wheeled around, but saw nothing for a while. At last, a wisp of vapor presented itself in the moss that clung under the cellar steps. The Pevensies continued their meeting.

"Well?" I said. "Come out. I've seen you."

No answer came. I clicked my tongue and pointed to a spot in the dirt.

"I _can_ force you, you know," I said.

The vapor solidified. A pale boy stepped from under the masonry. He hung his head, which was proper enough in the presence of royalty, I suppose. His eyes bugged out when he saw me in the light.

"Afraid?" I said.

"Yes, Majesty."

He cringed when he said it. A disgusting gesture but, as my mother used to say, necessary. The boy trudged to the point I'd indicated, and stood in front of a map of the world as Narnia's cartographers imagined it: a series of concentric circles drawn in cracked black ink. The paints had dulled as the parchment aged, or perhaps they were always dull. In either case, I recalled the bright colors on the signs in Edmund's world—the sort that no artist that I knew of, Charnian or otherwise, could mix. The thought irritated me for some reason, and I wrung it through my mind until the life had drained from it.

"Who are you?" I said.

The boy didn't answer. I grabbed his hair and tilted his head upward until he met my eyes. The hair was long and white and cut in a bowl. Perhaps it had once been blond.

"Well?"

"Y-y-ou don't remember me?" he stammered.

I raised an eyebrow.

"Should I?"

"You s-sent me here," he said.

I slapped him. He cringed, and would have curled into a ball if I hadn't held a clump of his hair in my hand.

"'You sent me here, _Your Majesty_,'" I said. "Address me correctly, boy. And that's doubly true if I sent you abroad. I can't stand ingratit—"

I heard Tash's wheezing laughter in the background. His shadow oiled across the jars of homunculi and darkened the glass of the Ogham amulets and scrying-mirrors. Now the boy _did_ curl into a ball, and I released his hair just in time to avoid tearing it. He whimpered, and I felt my lip curl down in disgust.

Tash's voice bounced sing-song throughout the cellar.

_He came with brothers and sisters…_

"What?" I said.

Other children emerged from the walls. Black shapes with heads like locusts emerged behind them, prodding them into my presence with sticks. Tash's servants. The children tried to shy away. The Pevensies continued their quarrel unabated, although I noticed that Lucy pulled her shawl closer when the specters passed through her. She probably didn't know why.

_Come now, Jadis. You remember __**this**__ batch of children, don't you?_

I looked at the boy again.

Oh.

Yes.

I'd hand-picked him, along with the others.

_Fifty of Narnia's sons and daughters for the Mad King of the Isles_, Tash's voice chanted.

The boy wouldn't stop looking at me. I shrugged.

"Tash willed it," I said.

The boy said nothing. The others avoided by glance, and clung to each other. One girl screamed until the locust-things shook her into silence.

"…And why should it matter anyway?" I said.

No answer. I turned to the others.

"Fyren's father needed children," I said. "He was an ally…Do you understand?"

The way the children _cringed_ must have triggered my response. That must have been it-something about the suppressed weeping and shivering and clawing at each other for comfort in my presence. The Pevensies were almost shouting now. Clearly, their argument had escalated since I'd last checked. My own voice rose against my better judgment.

"And what would you have done otherwise?" I screamed. "I know you all! Slum rats from Galma and farmers' brats from Archenland…What did you have to live for, anyway?"

Cringe.

Cower.

"Stop _looking_ at me!"

The rest of the room had fallen silent. Edmund was staring at me, and I realized that he must have been staring for a long time. My stomach lurched when I realized that the other Pevensies had stopped too. They were watching Edmund.

"She's still here, isn't she?" Susan said.

Edmund paled.

"She's not—wh—How do you know about-?" he said.

The Just King answered his own question when he wheeled on Lucy and pointed a finger at Susan.

"You _told_ her," he said. "I can't believe you _told_ her!"

Lucy opened her mouth, but it was Susan who bolted out of her seat and leaned close to Edmund. She was a tall girl, I realized—still around Edmund's height, despite their age. The braids in her hair bounced as she rose, and I recognized, nestled in the braids, the black-and-white zigzagged beads that Narnians use to ward off elf-shot. Susan's voice arched.

"What a _surprise_," she said. "You know something, Ed? I could tolerate your double standards when you were just sneaking in the shadows with your spies and doing who-knows-what to 'keep us safe'…but _this_? How _dare_ you complain about Fyren when you're carting around some dead succubus like a pet? How can you—"

"She's not a succubus," Edmund said.

Susan didn't miss a beat. She smiled the way my sister used to before she dug a knife in deeper.

"Oh, no," she said. "_Pardon_ me, Ed. I should have remembered your bizarre hang-up with women. As if we're all harlots except for Lucy here—"

Edmund leaned back into his chair, not breaking eye contact, fingers steepled in a picture of nonchalance. He sneered, though, and Susan saw it. She jabbed her finger at him.

"There!" she said. "That smug little look of yours! Oh, I can _imagine_ what our histories would look like if you wrote them..."

Her voice became higher, shriller.

"'And four children ruled in Narnia," Susan said. "'Well, three, actually. Susan didn't _really_ care about her kingdom, don't you know? She just _whored around_ in Caer Paravel and gossiped with her court while her brothers and sister saved the kingdom.'"

Lucy covered her mouth with her hand. Peter looked from Susan to Edmund like the noble ass that he was, too stupid to say anything and probably puffed up with chivalrous indignation at the whole incident. A long pause followed, as the two people in the center of the maelstrom just glared daggers at each other.

When Edmund spoke, though, he did it in that calm, dismissive tone I'd always found annoying.

"…And what's your point, Su?"

Susan opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Her face reddened while Peter bristled. He grabbed Edmund's arm.

"See here, Ed—"

"Save it."

Edmund shrugged him off and headed for the door. He pointed to a stack of parchment on the table.

"I've studied the coasts and worked out an attack plan," he said. "We start in three days. Take a look, if you can be bothered."

He briefly looked to Susan, who had already buried her head in her hands.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll fight Susan's bloody war for her."

The door slammed.

* * *

I stayed around, more out of curiosity than anything else, while Peter made consoling noises and gathered Edmund's plans. Lucy put her hand on Susan's shoulder, but the older girl waved her away, and Lucy and Peter finally had the decency to leave. The other specters had faded into the walls again, although one remained.

"Boy," I said.

He peeked from under the stairs.

"Yes, Majesty?"

"Alchemy requires test subjects," I said. "You understand?"

"I…I can't say, Majesty…I'm just—"

"A commoner," I said. "Yes. That's right. You ate well, didn't you? Slept decently? Wore nice clothes?"

Gods, I sounded pathetic.

"Yes, Majesty."

"Tash ordered it," I said. "Reasons of state. Out of my hands."

"Yes, Majesty."

He gave another of those loathesome bows.

"Well, there you are then," I said. "Leave me alone."

I turned my attention to Susan, who was tracing the table's woodgrains. Her fingernails skimmed over loops and curves and arrows. Like most woodwork in the Lone Islands, the table's carpenter had split it green, and it presented Susan with too few cracks to arrest her hand's progress. I felt a tug at my sleeve.

"Majesty?"

The boy again.

"What now?" I said.

"That young man," he said. "The one they called King Edmund…"

"What about him?"

"He doesn't have the mark, Majesty," he said. "None of them do. Not like King Orry or King Fyren or you."

"Not all royalty have that mark," I said.

He still looked skeptical.

"Edmund _is_ a king," I said. "As for the others, I won't comment."

"But His Majesty said—"

"Orry was a fool who bankrupted his country looking for an elixir that didn't exist," I snapped. "Now leave me alone."

He gave me a puzzled look.

"But Majesty, you sent us—"

"I'm...I'm sorry," I said. "Forget it."

_Coward_, Tash muttered.

I held up a hand when I heard the bolt latch. Susan stood by the door, her hands behind her back and her eyes searching the room.

"Please go," I said.

The child vanished. Susan wiped her eyes on her sleeve. I noticed a darker patch on the fabric before she turned it toward her body again—just a hint of dampness.

"Well, Jadis?" Susan said. "I know you're in here, somewhere."

Well…this _was_ interesting, wasn't it just? I said nothing and waited.

_Five to one she takes the next step_, Tash whispered.

_No bet_, I replied.

The Gentle Queen proved me right a moment later, when she pointed at one of the mirrors. It was copper, like the others, but its maker had etched a scene onto its surface. A man with wings like a bat and two heads wearing a single crown stood on a stone. In his hand, he held a goblet with snakes whose foreheads sprouted peacock feathers. Serpents with dogs' faces writhed beneath his feet. They curled around a plant with thirteen flowers, and each flower had eyes.

"What are you waiting for?" Susan said. "This place has scrying mirrors, doesn't it?"

_Shall I oblige her?_ I said.

_Of course, _Tash replied.

I touched the mirror and seeped into it. The connection was made a few seconds later when I saw Susan's face as if I was looking through yellow glass. Her eyes widened.

"You called?" I said.

Her surprise lasted only a moment—I give her credit for that much. Her lips thinned, and she raised her chin as she looked at me. I remembered the girl who'd buried red-fletched arrows into the bodies of my ghouls, and I smiled.

_How well she hides her fear, Lord Tash._

_A bit like you, once…_

_Shut up._

"Leave my brother alone," she said.

I laughed.

"We have a _deal_, girl. Surely you understand the consequences of a deal sworn on the Deep Magic?"

"Then release him from it," she said.

"No."

My stomach lurched as the room shook and seemed to upend itself, so that the floor became a wall and Susan stood sideways. I realized that she must have picked the mirror up.

"You didn't make a deal with _me_," she said. "I'll find your vile game and I'll destroy it."

Tash giggled in the background—a cross between a horse's whinny and nails on slate. The world spun and I felt my insides churn as a loud _pong_ resounded through the mirror. I clutched my hands to my ears to stop the noise. That's when I realized that Susan had dropped the mirror.

The door unlatched…

_Pray continue_, Tash said.

The claws ran down my back. I thought fast, and spoke faster.

"Tell me something, Susan," I said. "How does it feel to have your brother do your dirty work for you?"

I heard a _shunk-clop!_ as the bolt returned to its locked position. The ceiling rushed at me, then righted itself. Susan's face was inches from mine—or the mirror's surface, if you prefer.

"Oh, go ahead," I said. "Pretend you're angry and stare me down if it'll soothe your conscience."

And then I laughed at her. I lit each of the mirrors behind me with a scene I'd witnessed from Edmund's memories—the scenes I'd looked at after I'd assured him of his privacy. Still naïve in so many ways, that boy…

One mirror showed the human skeletons Edmund had seen during the Great Famine from the year of his accession. Another displayed the result: peasants running amok in the Lantern Wastes, killing their lords for hoarding grain.

I showed her Edmund's second 'battle': a shivering ten-year-old on a horse sent to the parlay with the peasant rebels as a sign of good faith. They met halfway across a muddy field. Narnia's nobles had assured Edmund that negotiations would settle the matter. A lie, of course; only a child raised in Edmund's nursery-world would have believed them. The nobles cut the rebel leaders down when they arrived. With the leaders gone, the knights and barons attacked a now-headless army, and dealt with the peasants as only nobles can. Edmund couldn't stop shaking for days.

I showed Susan the port-cities of Galma when the plague arrived. The sea air hadn't carried that pestilence to Caer Paravel; Susan hadn't seen men with sores dying in their beds, or the social breakdown that came when the clergy died caring for the sick. _Now_ she saw. Susan watched Edmund hold trials for men accused of murder, and robbery, and other crimes committed in the dead of night when the watchmen no longer watch.

And then I showed her the rest: Edmund's Special Court, which dealt with threats to Peter's throne - or, more accurately, to Edmund's siblings. A handmaiden who had attempted to poison Lucy was executed. Her employer, a lord named Carolus, never woke up from a spider bite. A courtier who had tried to murder Susan with magic and wax dolls disappeared without a trace. And so on.

I turned back to Susan to see how she was taking it. Her mouth was open.

"We-e-e-elll…?" I said.

"This…can't be true," she whispered.

"Convenient, don't you think?" I said. "A knife in the back of your enemies, eh, Susan? Maugrim was never this efficient."

She started to shake her head, but the gesture died halfway through. Her eyes were still glued to the mirrors.

"And all _you_ needed to do was play on his guilt," I said. "Admirable, I suppose—in its way. You can wile away your time in Caer Paravel, and marry whom you please, and your brother picks up the pieces because he's just so—"

"And whose fault is that?" she screamed.

The sound echoed through the mirror. I smirked, although the hands that I'd clutched to my ears detracted from the gesture.

"I just created the situation," I said. "You _profited_ from it."

"I _profited_ from it?" she hissed. "Are you joking? Do you think I _love_ Fyren, or any of the other thugs I've been engaged to?"

The room seemed to vibrate, which meant that Susan's hand was shaking. I couldn't entirely suppress the note of surprise in my voice.

"…Come again?"

"How _easy_ do you think it is to run a court with a bunch of savages who'd sooner hit a woman than look at her?" Susan said. "D'you know what men are like here? Do you? They're something out of the Dark Ages. They see romance as a kind of _game_, like it's funny. 'Oh, ha-ha. Treat women like equals.' A joke."

I rolled my eyes. Charn's royal house had possessed its share of women who'd cry for their 'sisters' in the lower orders. The idea had always annoyed me—as if it drew some _equivalence_ between a peasant woman and me.

Nonsense, of course. Strike a peasant and she'll act more respectfully to you in the future. Strike _me_ or one of my sisters and you'll find a dagger in your throat.

"And you think your masquerade balls and poetry contests will change that?" I said.

"Eventually! A century from now, or two-"

"Ha!"

_Ah, Jadis_, Tash's voice sighed. _How puzzling it must be..._

_What?_

_To find __two__ monarchs who don't want the power they've seized._

Now a tear _was_ running down Susan's cheek, which was puffy and red, although I could still see the freckles. The mirror tilted again. Susan must have set it on the table, since she towered over me, arms leaning on each side of the mirror like pillars. She sniffled, and her mask of calm returned.

"Don't _ever_ tell me that I haven't sacrificed," she said. "That I'm _not_ sacrificing..."

She paused, and sighed.

"It's inevitable," she said. "Sooner or later…"

Another pause.

"My brothers...They'll come back to me in shrouds, you know that? Peter's wars…it's going to be Edmund or Peter or both of them. And then _Lucy…_"

She brought down her hand on the table as if she was going to hit it, but arrested the movement at the last moment. It alighted gently. She spoke hurriedly, as if the words had run around her mind for a long time.

"Once we have the Lone Islands, we'll have peace," she said. "Peace...Calormen can't move against us and we can concentrate on internal reforms. Calormen can't-If Ed's too…If he's too stupid to see that we're working for the same thing, well…fine."

I chuckled.

"You want me to tell him, don't you?" I said.

Her expression didn't change an iota.

"Do what you like," she said. "This conversation is over."

I leaked out of the mirror. Just in time, too: the Gentle Queen jammed a dagger into the copper, cleaving the mirror in two.


	18. Chapter 17: Edmund

**Chapter 17: Edmund**

Nighttime, and the moonlight danced through the waves. Warm air blew in from the sea. Jadis and I couldn't see the city's lights from the beach, so only two things distracted us: the water rolling onto the English coast, and the chatter of four children. The eldest of the four stormed through the surf, laughing and kicking up sand in soggy globs. The night painted them black, and they plopped into the sea around the boy like musket fire.

Some of the water splashed the youngest—a girl—who had built a cone of sand and had begun to decorate it with shells. The girl cried and dropped a lollipop, whereupon her older sister chided the boy. The sister had black hair, much darker than the others', although she didn't braid it against elf-shot yet. The boy looked at his feet and muttered apologies.

A fourth Pevensie sat apart from the other three. He'd drawn faces in the sand with a stick, and shivered when a wave came in and immersed his feet. When the wave retreated, it took his drawings with it. The boy looked up long enough to stick out his tongue.

"Yes…_do_ be careful, Peter."

He said it nasally, imitating what he perceived as his sister's whiny, scolding tone. I winced.

Jadis didn't seem to notice. Instead, she scanned the stars. As before, she "wore" her younger body, either as a concession to my subconscious fears or as another way to taunt me. She sat upright and rocked forward and backward, her thin legs crossed in front of her chest.

"Looking for something?" I said.

"Mmm?"

"You're looking at the sky as if it's a ledger."

Jadis blinked and seemed to notice me.

"That's because I can read it," she said.

I didn't say anything. Jadis must have interpreted this as skepticism.

"It's not a parlor trick like the astrologers in your world," she said. "When their time came, our mothers in Charn escaped to the countryside to give birth in secret because didn't want anyone to know our horoscopes...Come of think of it, I didn't even know Iaida's."-and here she half-smiled-"Just as well, I suppose."

She pointed at a line of three stars above us.

"Look," she said. "They form clusters, like the ones in Charn. Gods. Goddesses. Heroes. That sort of thing. Natural patterns for those who know how to look."

"We call them constellations," I said. "Sorry, but that's all I can tell you. I never bothered learning—"

Jadis twirled her finger in the air as if drawing a circle around the stars she'd pointed out.

"A belt," she said. "A hunter's belt."

She raised her arm slightly higher, moving up the chain of stars.

"He's killing the beast that he holds in his hand," she said. "And looking for an enemy…"

Jadis squinted.

"…Something ancient. From the time before your world bubbled up from chaos. Eight legs, two arms…or…Ha! Yes. He wants seven sisters, too. They're running beyond the night sky, and he can't find them…"

She trailed off. A lazy smile crossed her face.

"…You see, little king, it's _always_ lust when you come right down to it. Remember that."

Jadis paused. When she spoke again, her voice acquired an offhand lilt—an _oh-by-the-way _sort of voice, the kind that people use when they remind each other to pick up another bag of oranges at the corner market.

"You'll never get what you want, you know," Jadis said.

"What's that?" I said.

"Me," she replied with a shrug.

I began to sit up. She stopped rocking and fixed me with one of her unblinking stares.

"Go on," she said. "Deny it. I've seen your dreams."

I didn't say anything. Jadis lay down with a smirk, arms behind her head. Her right leg remained crossed over her left, and it kicked at the stars.

"Amusing, if you think about it," she said, "If I was still young…if I hadn't destroyed Charn…if you hadn't starved in my dungeons…You still wouldn't get what you want from me, little king. You've been North?"

I nodded.

"Then you know about fairy women and their lovers? How the mortal withers and dies pining for them? Charn's daughters are like that. We weren't bred for sympathy or companionship. The last of King Frank's line could have told you as much…if he'd lived."

"I don't _want_ anything from you," I said. "Except to be left alone."

Jadis laughed. She swirled the water in one of the tidal pools that had formed in the sand. Tiny clams—or oysters; I could never tell the difference—opened and closed their mouths. When Jadis burrowed under one of them with her fingers, its mouth clamped shut.

"Nonsense," she said.

The bickering between Susan's younger self and mine escalated. Their voices acquired an edge.

"Anyway," I said. "Odd sort of thing to tell your victim."

"Oh?"

Jadis released the clam, and it hit the water with a little _plip_. She watched it, clicking her tongue once—twice—against the roof of her mouth as if marking off time.

"Warning me and all that," I said. "Seems a bit counterproductive."

When the clam opened its mouth, Jadis scraped it out of its shell with her fingernail. She flicked the goo into the surf.

"I'm only telling you because I know you won't listen," she said. "Fair warning, though."

"You've lived in Narnia since the beginning?" I said.

Jadis narrowed her eyes, as if looking for a trap. Still, she nodded.

"Have you heard of Utir-Spath?" I said.

"A person?"

"A city."

"No," she said. "I haven't."

"Neither had I until our workers dug it up in Calormen," I said. "Diplomatic mission. Strange place…Locals didn't talk about it much. Big, too. It must have rivaled Tashbaan once. We found some old piles of Calormene weapons in offerings caches…But you don't like history, do you?"

Jadis rolled her eyes.

"It isn't as if I have something better to do," she said.

"Fair enough," I said.

My younger self squealed to our parents when Susan said something or other. Mother and Father got there just in time to see his—my—face become red and puffy.

"All right," I said. "In any event, something felt strange about the place. Wrong. When we cleared out the sand and walked through the streets, it felt as if someone was watching us. We dug up the archives a few weeks later. It seems that Utir-Spath's king had made a deal with Zardeenah."

Jadis's foot stopped kicking. She turned away from the stars.

"And?" she said.

"He wanted warriors," I said. "So he asked Zardeenah to get rid of inconvenient things like conscience and guilt… Apparently thought he'd run over Tashbaan with a bunch of hardened killers."

Jadis turned back to the stars. Her voice became monotone again. Leaden.

"Another Charn," she said.

"No."

The suspicious look returned.

"What, then?" she said. "Did Calormen wipe them out? Civil war?"

"Collapse," I said. "As far we could tell, anyway. The records just stopped. Seems they didn't train the next generation to read or write, either."

"Warriors don't need writing," she said.

Despite myself, I smiled as I sprung the trap.

"Except that Utir-Spath's people didn't become warriors," I said.

I told her what I'd found when I'd checked Charn's Royal Annals, travelers' accounts, and the few snippets of folk tradition that I'd pieced together. They all painted pretty much the same picture of Utir-Spath's people: Cowards. Petty thieves. Con men. When Utir-Spath's soldiers went into battle, they broke and ran because they weren't afraid of their neighbors' scorn. When they had children, they left them to their own devices. The graveyards had confirmed that much, at least. We'd found bodies of sixteen-year-olds in the cemeteries that looked like they were nine or ten, and those were the _early_ bodies. Orderly burials had stopped when the infection really took hold. Irrigation must have ended at roughly the same time, since we'd found silt, but no more crops.

"What happened to the place?" Jadis said.

"As far as we could tell, the city died in a generation," I said. "The locals still talk about 'Zardeenah's stain' when somebody commits a crime."

"Lovely story," Jadis said. "I fail to see your point."

"My point," I said, "is that your society functioned well enough, so I doubt your bloodlines had anything to do with it. Charn didn't lie down and starve. You and Linshiol cut its throat."

Jadis chuckled once, softly.

"And this is your way of saying I have a conscience," she said. "You don't coat your words with honey, do you, little king?"

I looked to the children again. My quarrel with Susan had degenerated into full-fledged bickering, and our father moved between us. Moonlight shone off the top of his bald head. He seemed shorter and plumper and redder than I had remembered him—though the last probably came from too much sunlight earlier in the day. At any rate, he scolded Susan for being overbearing and my younger self for provoking her. A bit sheepishly—not meeting each other's eyes—we shook hands and said "_pax_".

"They'd be horrified if they could see us now," I said.

"Eh?"

"Our parents," I said.

Jadis raised an eyebrow.

"You're kings and queens."

"We're not—I-you wouldn't understand," I said. "Never mind."

Susan and my younger self stole glances at our father, waiting for him to turn his back. When he did, we hugged each other—just quickly enough that Father wouldn't see that his cajoling had worked. And then Susan took my hand and led me into the waves. Jadis leaned forward, stroking her bottom lip as the watched the exchange.

"Odd," she said. "Your parents, I mean. Such a _foolish_ world you came from..."

But I didn't hear the note of scorn in her voice that I'd expected. In any event, I never asked for clarification, and she never gave it.

When my father bundled my brother and sisters up in towels and rubbed them dry, Jadis returned to the stars. Stress lines formed on her forehead, and her eyes jumped from constellation to constellation.

"What are you—"

"Shush," she said.

But she knew as well as I did that her time was almost up. I stood and dusted the sand from my tunic. Wasted effort, since this was a dream.

"Right," I said. "It's time to—"

"I'm dying," she said.

She'd said it so calmly. As if she was preoccupied with something else and couldn't be bothered to worry.

"I thought you were already dead," I said.

Her eyes didn't leave the heavens.

"Fading," she said. "I won't be around much longer, whatever you call it. Now kindly be _quiet_ and let me concentrate."

I shouldn't have, but I sat back down. As she worked, Jadis kept up a constant stream of murmuring. I couldn't hear most of it, and couldn't recognize the few words I managed to pick up. It wasn't Charnian—or at least, not the Charnian I'd heard before. It had a tonal quality, like the languages they spoke in the Western Woods. Long strings of vowels rose and fell, and every so often a sharp consonant cut them off. It was the sort of language that engineers would speak if they were magicians.

Jadis stopped. She looked at the sky sideways. Her expression changed into something I couldn't quite place, and then I realized what she was doing.

"You found my birthday when you looked through my mind," I said. "You're figuring out a horoscope."

For a few moments, Jadis didn't answer. She seemed to remember herself, though, and turned to me again.

"That's…yes," she said. "You were born on Earth, so I needed to see Earth's stars."

And then she smirked.

"Payment deserves repayment, little king," she said. "After all, you've given your...ah…_services_ so generously."

"Not interested," I said.

On the side of Jadis's body that faced away from me, her hand clawed at the ground. A stream of sand filtered through her fingers. I expected a few choice words, but instead she seemed to force her hand to open again. Her shoulders relaxed.

"Edmund."

"What?"

Jadis talked slowly, with the sort of forced patience that you'd use with a young child…or someone who is about to do something very, very stupid.

"I'm the last of a line of seers who read the stars when your world was still molten," she said. "_Very _soon, Tash will come for me. I will be gone. My world's knowledge will be gone. Now. What do you want to know?"

"I don't want—"

"Enough!" she snapped. "I'm not going into _that place_ as a debtor, do you understand me? _What—Do—You—Want—To—Know?"_

Sometimes, answers slip out without our intending to give them. At other times, we only tell ourselves that they do.

"Will I ever get back home?"

She sighed, as if the question had disappointed her.

"Yes," she said. "One year, seven months, and twenty-two days from now. And your vile siblings with you."

And then, just like that, everything I'd suffered for the past few months made sense.

* * *

Our fleet landed without opposition. Alexander, Fyren's only surviving brother, wouldn't chance a naval battle, which suited me, too.

I'm afraid that I can't give you a clear picture of the battle that followed, even though I commanded it. If I've given you detailed accounts of the Lone Islands campaign up to this point, it's only because I've relied on my conversations with Jadis after the fact…and Jadis could watch men die in battle with a cold detachment that I've never seen in another human being. In any event, the former Queen of Charn didn't accompany me in the siege of Narrowhaven. Without her matter-of-fact appraisal, I can only give you flashes.

I remember our first attack, which Peter launched just before dawn. Our soldiers stormed the walls with siege ladders. Each man neglected his shield arm in order to hoist himself from one rung to the next, and most paid the price. Fires from the walls illuminated the attackers. I remember squinting in the darkness, trying to guess the fires' purpose. The answer came soon enough, when I heard the sloshing and screams of pain. Little figures toppled from the ladders when the Lone Islanders dumped boiling oil from the vats sitting above the flames.

I also remember watching Susan loose arrow after arrow as soon as the sun fell on the walls. Red-fletched arrows hit the attackers around Peter, and the High King scrambled down the ladder again with a bleeding arm, a sooty face, and a foul temper. Oh, yes—Susan fought in our little wars as well, whatever the stories say. And if I told Professor Lewis otherwise, well, my reasons are my own. We'll leave it at that.

I remember my surge of relief when the bronze cannons arrived. They must have come after Peter's attack, since I think it was lighter then. The dwarves had sculpted dragons' heads and gargoyles along the tubes. The idea itself, along with the formula for gunpowder, had emerged from Peter's childhood obsession with all things military (with your humble correspondent's occasional assistance, courtesy of a set of encyclopedias). The technical details, though—the casting process, the wet-mixing, the proportions of sulfur to saltpeter to charcoal—had come from the Narnians' own experiments once we'd told them what to look for. Human bellmakers had cast the barrels, dwarves had mixed the powder, and a family of peregrine falcons with an uncanny knack for ballistics had volunteered to direct the gunners. Peter had named the two largest guns _Aslan _and _Caer Paravel_. Susan had not approved, and even Lucy felt a bit uneasy about the names. I'd thought that they fit well enough.

The guns blasted away for a while, and my teeth chattered when the shockwaves swept over me. I can still see in my mind's eye the hole in the wall. Fyren's father had built Narrowhaven's walls along Calormene lines: tall and thin, the better to repel siege ladders. They cracked under artillery bombardment. In the wreckage, I saw a ragged line of pikes—white wood and shining points, probably from burnished silver. It's odd how some details stick in your mind: A man with matted red hair stood in their front rank brandishing a scimitar. He had thick stubble on his chin, and when I looked at his feet I noticed that his boots tapered into points like Calormene shoes. Oh, and he wore a tartan robe, of all things. When the cannons boomed again, he raised his shield. I lost him in the smoke.

By now the centaurs must have brought up the lighter guns—four field pieces that we'd set up like horse artillery. I say this because cannonballs ripped through the lines more frequently now, and the pikemen broke. Peter's white horse staggered, and the High King crashed into the mud. Roger, I think his name was. The horse, I mean. I hadn't known him very well—just that he had a talent for dirty limericks, and that he'd beamed with pride when the High King had watched his foal win a race. Peter remounted, this time on a gray charger, and I allowed myself to exhale. Through the smoke, I watched centaurs stuff a cannon with closer-range fare: small stones, broken glass, and melted-down lead from the stained glass windows in Tash's temple. I think we'd looted it earlier.

The battle ended sometime after that, but I couldn't tell you how long. In battle, time speeds up, slows down, and loops around without much rhyme or reason. Peter's first attack on Narrowhaven's walls, for instance, had seemed like no more than twenty minutes; Susan told me afterward that it had consumed three hours. I suppose that explains the sun in our eyes at the end.

Our human troops had penetrated Doorn's residential district first, and without any opponents to fight, they'd devolved into the usual amusements of victorious besiegers: looting, burning, and abusing civilians. One particular victim stands out: a pot-bellied man in a blue tunic slumped over a lettuce cart.

Fortunately, my brother and I had prepared for this sort of thing. Our birds of prey directed gangs of Talking Beasts from one trouble spot to another, and generally our human troops backed down when they saw them. We protected most of Narrowhaven's women, at any rate, and that was more than most medieval armies could claim. As for the centaurs, we kept them out of the city. We didn't want them getting access to alcohol.

Moving on…

* * *

Time may ebb and flow in battle, but it crawls during the cleanup. Burials took several days. I left most of the digging to local townsmen; nothing undermines morale more surely than ordering men to bury their comrades. As usual, the looters arrived. Some came from our army, some from the town. We kept our folk in line as best we could. The Black Dwarves, especially, were not above helping a dying man along when he clutched a bauble too tightly.

I supervised the burials, and noticed that artillery fire does something especially unpleasant. I won't go into detail because I don't say this to shock you; I mean it merely as an observation. Soldiers go into battle expecting death with an ounce of dignity: to be carried home on their shield looking something like they did when they set off. Admittedly, axes and swords sometimes took this dignity away, but I've never seen anything affect bodies the way that our shells and grapeshot had done at Doorn. But before you rush to agree with me about the horrors of modern war, remember that I'd brought it to Narnia in the first place.

…I'm sorry. I'm being morbid, and I shouldn't.

Although I didn't appreciate it at the time, the Battle of Doorn had been a success. We hadn't suffered many casualties, and most of Doorn's defenders had fled rather than die at their posts. Better still, it had ended quickly. We hadn't trudged through malarial swamps as we'd done during the campaign against the Marsh-Reivers on the Telmarine border. We hadn't suffered odd accidents, like the seventeen men who'd died when trees fell on them in the Northern Wars. We hadn't lost a third of our army to disease, unlike our campaign in Owlwood…

Peter coughed and shooed away a fly.

"Not sure I like this one, Ed."

"It's a battlefield, Pete."

He coughed again.

"Didn't seem…well, _fair_, if you see what I mean…"

He trailed off.

I remembered something I'd heard from Jadis once: "_If you fight a battle well enough, little king, it isn't a __game__. It's an execution_._"_

I didn't mention this to Peter.

* * *

"Percival? Where are you? Percy?"

Unlike my Chief of Intelligence, I couldn't navigate in the dark very well. The old fellow humored me, though: he squeaked until I stood under his perch. Percy had nestled in the rafters that guarded the red granite of St. Grainne's sepulcher from the sea storms that had lashed it since time immemorial. Clumps of seaweed and slime had accumulated on the crags around the tomb. I'd nearly lost my footing on a few occasions, and I'd received the cuts to show for it. Still, even if the sepulcher's rocks kept out most pilgrims, its hallowed ground kept out something of a much nastier variety. We could speak in private.

I heard a tiny _"cheef!"_ and realized that Percy had sneezed. I apologized again for the saltwater and rain. Percy suppressed a shiver and replied that he hadn't noticed.

I'd expected as much, and after seven years, I'd learned to accommodate his tics. At the first convenient opportunity, I turned my back, giving him the opportunity to sneeze into his wing, which he did as quietly as he could. Always very particular about protocol, was Percy.

"So," I said. "Tell me what you've found."

Percy wrinkled his squashed snout as a drop of water ran down his nostrils.

"Ah…hem…_sneef-sneff…_Not much, I'm afraid."

"What about the fighting cockerel?" I said. "The one Fyren inherited from his father?"

"Ah, yes…" – _cheef!_ – "Pardon, Majesty. Hem. Yes, that one. You were right: he doesn't expose it to fights like the others."

I turned and watched a green tide lap the rocks. The locals say that three giants formed the Lone Islands when they cut up a single landmass that they'd inherited from their father. If so, they must have used a very rusty saw. With the exception of a few beaches, Doorn's shores rose above the sea in tall, snaggletoothed mountains of black rock. Bits of oxidized iron protruded from the sides like cavities.

"D'you think the cockerel's a familiar?" I said.

Percy sighed and shook his head.

"Ah, if only…That _would_ solve our problems, wouldn't it, Majesty?"

I wasn't ready to let it go so easily.

"Look here, though," I said, ticking points off my fingers. "He visits it regularly, doesn't he? He _could_ be feeding it."

"With corn," Percy said. "Not blood."

"He inherited the bird from his father," I said. "I doubt Old Orry kept birds that _weren't_ familiars. And Fyren's mother—"

Again, Percy shook his head.

"I don't think Fyren could have kept up a charade for this long," he said.

"But—"

Percy stretched his wing toward the shore. A drop of water smacked against the skin under the wing bone, and he withdrew it.

"All right, then," he said. "Let's say Fyren _is_ a Tash worshipper. What could Tash have gained from this war?"

The wind screamed past the pillars and bit through the wet fibers of my cloak. Now it was my turn to shiver.

"Narnia," I said. "Tash'll get Narnia."

Percy's black eyes didn't change. Not that they could have.

"I fail to see the connection, Majesty," he said.

"Jadis," I said. "She read the stars in my world. We're leaving, Percy."

"Leaving…where?" he said. "You're referring to the army?"

I shook my head.

"To the Pevensie Dynasty," I said. "We're leaving Narnia. Aslan will take us back."

"And you believed her?"

"I did."

Percy opened his mouth, revealing a triangular row of fangs. His expression accentuated the pink, half-moon shaped flap of skin that covered his nostrils. It pulsed in and out as he breathed. Another _cheef!_ followed. Percy didn't seem to notice this time. And a wave crashed onto shore.

"That's…_hem_…we—we'll _–hem_—miss you, I suppose. Calormen won't take Narnia. I'll promise you that much, Majesty. You've arranged for the succession, so it shouldn't be—"

"You're forgetting something," I said.

"Oh—yes…the Lone Islands might fall back into—"

"I meant Susan's child," I said.

If you've never seen a bat puzzled, I'm afraid I can't put it into words. It's a collection of subtle facial changes that you only begin to notice after a few years.

"But Susan doesn't have…_Oh…._"

"She will," I said. "If she marries Fyren, she'll leave a young child behind. And the barons would _love_ that, wouldn't they just?"

Percy's head wobbled very slightly from side to side, as it often did when he was thinking. I knew from long acquaintance how quickly that clockwork mind could jump from dot to dot.

"Scenario," I said. "We disappear. Some of the barons rally behind Susan's child because they want to manipulate him, and a few others support rival claimants…And Tash has drawn this war out, hasn't he? He's balanced Narnia's tolerance for witchcraft with Fyren's massacres because he wants the Lone Islands resentful, but he _doesn't_ want witchcraft wiped out. Susan'll stop Fyren from killing them all off."

It didn't take Percy long to catch up.

"So the Tisroc grabs the Lone Islands," he said. "Fyren dies…_hem_…knife in the back from an angry Tash worshipper, I shouldn't wonder…and the Tisroc takes the Lone Islands after the assassination when Narnia isn't looking. Once the Tisroc has Doorn's fleet, he can ship troops into Narnia and play kingmaker—"

"No..." I said.

Percy sneezed. His ears fluttered as the jolt passed through his body

"Er…yes, I agree, Majesty," he said. "Quite terrible. We'll stop it, of course—"

"Hold on," I said. "That's not what I meant. What I _meant_ was that your scenario's missing something. You've just given me our best outcome."

"Pardon?"

"What if Fyren raises Susan's child in the Lone Islands?" I said. "We couldn't stop him after we leave. And Tash has servants there. A nursemaid, maybe. A playmate…"

Involuntarily, Percy's fangs came out.

"Tash kills the child?"

"Tash _converts_ the child," I said. "Fyren seems intent on keeping grandmum alive, so that's one source for the family's traditional religion to seep in right there. Regardless of Fyren's allegiances…"

"We'll stop Queen Susan," Percy said. "We _must_ tell her-"

"She knows," I said. "She doesn't believe it. None of them do, and I can't say I blame them."

"Ah," Percy said. "Your source."

"Apparently, dead witches aren't very trustworthy," I said.

"Jadis told you all this?"

"No," I said. "She only told me the date we're leaving. I figured the rest out."

The damp had divided Percy's fur into clumps. He smoothed the hair on his head with a wing-claw. Water dripped out.

"A mistake, then," he said. "Slip of the tongue. Perhaps Tash didn't explain his plans to her?"

"Probably."

Percy seemed to consider this for a moment. Another shiver ran down his body.

"Permission to speak freely, Majesty?" he said.

"Granted."

"Begging your pardon, Majesty, but I must ask you something."

I sat down on one of the stone benches. The masons had done little more than carve a boulder into something vaguely rectangular. Beads of water that had collected on the rock's surface moistened my tunic, but it was already too soaked to matter much. Percy flipped right-side up from his ceiling perch and flapped to the seat beside me. He crawled to the edge of the seat with his wing-claws in an ungainly scrabble. As he shivered there, I suddenly realized how small and mouselike he seemed.

"Go ahead," I said.

"Maje—_cheef!_—hem, pardon…Majesty, you are a young man," he said. "Forgive me, but unless you have changed _very_ much from the boy I met seven years ago, you are still a terribly _frightened_ young man. And I do not blame you. Something has lodged itself in your soul that has no right to be there, and it presents…temptations in the bargain."

Percy half-flew, half-hopped from his seat to mine. He landed on my leg. Between my tunic and his own insubstantial weight, I couldn't feel him alight there. He looked up at me, pinhole nostrils still pulsating.

"But you are also a King of Narnia," he said. "So I ask you as a king…_my_ king…Do you believe what the Witch told you?"

I thought for a long time before I answered.

"Yes," I said.

Percy nodded.

"Then we have work to do," he said.

I extended my finger as a perch, and felt delicate pinpricks as Percy's claws found purchase. I stood with my back to the storm, blocking the rain while my Chief of Intelligence wiped water off with his wings.

"As it happens, Percy, I _do_ have something in mind…"


	19. Chapter 18: Jadis

**Chapter 18: Jadis**

**

* * *

**

_FROM THE PEVENSINE CODE (a.k.a. "King Edmund's Law") _

_SECTION VII: Judicial Duels_

_**Rule: **_

_In matters of evidence, the so-called "Wager of Battle"— called in the Archen provinces the hólmganga—is hereby __invalidated__ as a means of determining guilt or liability in any case, criminal or civil. _

_**Analysis: **_

_(1) It is Our determination that the judicial duel does not distinguish between parties in the right and parties in the wrong. Rather, it awards victory to the party more adept at killing. _

_(2) Moreover, the judicial duel emerges from a tradition foreign to the Canon Law system that forms the undergirding of Narnian jurisprudence. _

_-(2)(a) The judicial duel relies upon Aslan to choose the "just" victor, yet Canon Law places Aslan on the same plane as other pagan deities—which is to say, grudging acceptance of existence without concession of special authority. _

_-(2)(b) That Aslan supports the Church is largely irrelevant, except insofar as it reduces suspicion of malice. His judgments are entitled to no more deference than the legal opinions of comparable Lay individuals. _

_-(2)(c) Canon law __does__ concede self-described deities' abilities as fact-finders and calculators of probability (see Aquinas), and, on this ground, some have argued that the judicial duel merely places Aslan in the position of a trier of fact, leaving legal determinations to the discretion of the Synod or the Monarch. This is error; it assumes that Aslan will intervene at all. In practice, we cannot determine whether Aslan has involved himself in a particular duel or not. The duel therefore cannot replace a jury trial…_

_

* * *

_

Edmund looked up from his bed and saw me in the doorway. His attention returned to the floor. His right shoe twitched, and the straw in its toes rustled each time it touched the floor. A black dalmatic hung on a rack near the door. A judge's mantle; two lines of silver thread ran down its side, each woven to resemble interlinked fish with gaping mouths.

"Well?" I said. "No greeting?"

"Hello."

Edmund propped his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet, picking up the dalmatic as if it weighed a hundred pounds. When he pulled it over his head, something in the fabric must have caught. Edmund struggled to get his arms through the narrow slits.

"Stuck?" I said.

"I can handle it, thanks."

"I wasn't offering."

More rustling of fabric followed.

"The sleeves're wider in England," he grumbled.

"I'm sure."

When he'd finally pulled both arms through and tugged the under-sleeves out again so that the fabric didn't scrape against bare skin, Edmund headed for the window.

"If you're looking for the sundial in the garden," I said, "it's two o'clock."

Half an hour until Alexander's trial. Extra time and idle hands…

"You said they were wider in England," I said.

"Eh?" he said. "Oh, the sleeves. Yes."

"I didn't notice any clothing like that in London," I said.

Edmund stopped for a moment, crossing his arms behind his back. He looked down and seemed to smile to himself.

"I was a choir boy when I was young. The priest wore one."

"Oh?"

He shook his head.

"Times change, huh?"

"Yes," I said. "They do."

We didn't speak for a while.

"So…" I said. "Not a Lion-worshipper like Lucy, then?"

"No. I'm with the Synod, more or less."

"Narnian Church?"

"Anglican."

The sect sounded vaguely familiar, but when I rifled through my memories I came up empty. Some fringe group from Earth, probably. In any event, it meant that the child-demiurge who ran Narnia hadn't deluded Edmund like he'd deluded Narnia's peasants. And Edmund's own siblings, apparently.

Edmund tapped his forefinger on the windowsill, and rubbed it against his thumb when it touched the inevitable detritus of dust and old spider silk.

"Nervous?" I said.

Pause.

"Yes," he said. "I guess."

I walked behind him and peered over his head at the courtyard below. I saw the burial plots where Fyren's ancestors had been interred—large mounds that they'd erected next to the churchyard's grounds. Fyren's diggers had turned them into brown scars. Can't have pagan barrows near a church.

Here and there, I saw the bones of cattle and slaves who had been sacrificed to help the buried chieftains on their way to the afterlife. The dwarves had scattered them in their search for the gold that Fyren had promised lay at the bottom of the mounds. I rested my chin on Edmund's shoulder, and he tensed as if I'd put a worm there. Which, of course, was partly why I'd done it.

"It's just a formality, little king."

"It's not my first trial," he said quickly.

"I know."

He turned to go. His hand was on the door handle when he stopped as if he'd forgotten something.

* * *

_Mother lies in her bed._

_I know the room. Maroon satins and silks on the bed. A deep purple rug. Tapestries, dark blue. Candlesticks that seem more yellow than gold—a dingy, dirty sort of yellow. The mirrors have dust._

_And she just LIES there._

…_and looks up?_

_No; her head only turns a little, supported by the pillow behind her. Her skin is paler, oiler, and slightly rumpled, as if it doesn't fit quite right. I see what looks like beginning of a double-chin, except that my mother was never overweight. Her skin has simply lost its liveliness. It hangs like an old woman's. The pits and imperfections seem magnified._

"_Oh," she says. "You."_

_The eyes don't focus. She's looking at the brass satyr statue on the table beside me. Not at me._

_I try anyway._

"_I…Mother, my Aunt—your sister—asked me to see you."_

_Her eyes slide closed. She turns her head to one side as if it's the hardest thing in the world to do._

"_Busy," she says. "Go…play."_

_Play._

_Yes, that's what she said. What the serf-children do. _

_I try to glare at her, but she doesn't say anything. Doesn't even bother. She would have slapped me for insolence before, and I don't think I'd mind that now. I hear gentle breathing._

_My hands are shaking when I leave the room. I clench them until they stop. _

"_Linshiol," I say, a little too loudly. "We should do something fun, don't you think?"_

_Linshiol. Of course I go to Linshiol. Iaida's already dead._

_I hope my mother hears me. I hope she hears me and realizes that while __she__ might have given up her duties, __I__ intend to keep going regardless. While she lies down and LETS herself die, I'll be riding the night wind with Tash—_

"_S'okay, you know," Linshiol says._

"_What? What do you-?"_

_She jerks a thumb at the door._

"_Y'know," she says. "Her. Your mom. Same thing happened to me a few years back."_

"_I'm fine…"_

_She shrugs._

"_Sure," she says. " Just saying…You get over it. Live and learn, right?"_

_I almost convince myself that she's right. _

…_._

_I do not return to that room again. When she dies, I sit outside and listen. It's quiet. That's what brings the bile to my throat. She dies just like she's falling asleep. No fight. Nothing. _

_This is __not__ my mother. My mother died when she drank the _Jugiza_ extract. This is a remnant._

_And again, I almost convince myself_…_Until the very end. That's when my mother sees Tash on the other side. _

_I know because that's when she starts screaming._

* * *

"Are you all right?" Edmund said.

"Fine!" I snapped. "I'm fine."

Edmund twisted the signet ring on his finger. He was looking at me as if measuring me, and I debated whether I should admit my 'episodes' rather than give him the satisfaction of bringing it out himself. Never mind, though.

"He's calling for you," Edmund said.

_Too late._

"Yes," I said.

He twisted the ring again. Bits of red wax had stuck in its grooves and ridges. He picked at them, but they'd stuck too deep.

"…I wanted to ask you something," he said. "If I may."

I sighed and sat on the bed, hoping that the tension would drain from me. It didn't work.

"Ah…a _personal_ question," I said, with as much of a sneer as I could muster. "Or perhaps you want to know whether Charn used mud bricks or built cairns like the other dead civilizations you've vandalized with your shovels."

"Actually—"

"I don't care," I said. "Fine. What do you want?"

"You said the stars in Charn told the future," he said.

"And your _question_ is…?"

"So Linshiol must've known that you'd use the Deplorable Word."

The observation was like getting hit in the gut. Not for the _details_, mind—like most laymen, Edmund was wrong about the extent of Charn's astral knowledge—but because his basic intuition was accurate. And I'd never considered it.

Now I did.

"No..." I said. "Well, perhaps-not exactly as you put it."

He stopped twisting the ring, and he leaned forward slightly. _Eager_, almost. For an odd moment, I felt like an insect under a looking glass. I kept talking until it wore off.

"The stars in Charn weren't as…democratic…as the stars in your world," I said. "They watched over the royal family. A million serfs might die, but the news would only reach the night's sky if it meant that a new queen would be crowned."

Edmund sat down on the old priest's bed in what he probably thought was a subtle movement—first leaning, and then sinking into place. As if he believed that a whisper or a leg out of place would remind me that I didn't tell stories—certainly not _this_ story to _this_ boy. And there was truth to that, I suppose. The hay in the mattress rustled. When he finally settled his weight on it, the bed jerked and its legs grated on the floor. I pretended I hadn't heard it.

"We all knew the day we would die," I said. "That was one thing that the stars _did _tell us. That's why our mothers gave birth in secret. You couldn't work these things out without a proper horoscope, you see."

"So Linshiol knew…what?"

I ran a finger across my lips and tried to remember the sequence of battles and assassinations. When she would have known each piece of the puzzle. What she _might_ have figured out. The Deplorable Word threw another complication into the picture. The stars didn't account for abominations. Oh, the stars predicted Linshiol's death, all right, but they couldn't have predicted the manner of it. The Word tore through fate even as it fulfilled it.

"In the last battle, she fought her way to me," I said. "We came as close as you and I are now….and-huh…"

"What?"

"Linshiol knew when she'd die," I said. "Down to the second. Probably thought I'd kill her in battle."

"But if you'd never used the Deplorable Word…" he began.

"Then I would have killed her in some other way," I said. "Fate, little king. You know what my people said about it?"

"Fate?"

"Yes."

"No," he said. "You never told me."

"It's an old saying," I said. "A scribe named Berka-Teshli wrote it on the oldest pillar of the Temple of Zardeenah before the _Ianon Ialpur _was formed. Roughly translated: '_Our gods are children, and we are their toy soldiers_._" _

I shrugged.

"Anyway," I said, "it sounds better in Charnian."

A pause followed.

"Linshiol knew she would die…and she _chose_ to put herself in your way?" Edmund said.

"So it seems," I said. "I hadn't considered it before, but yes."

Edmund nodded, and then turned my world upside down for the second time that day.

"She wanted Affa to know you killed her."

The scenario ran through my mind in images: the look of horror on Affa's face when my dagger finished Linshiol. The rout of Linshiol's army that would have followed. The accusations, counter-accusations, tears, and screaming that would have ensued if by some miracle Affa and I had both survived. More likely he would have died fighting, but I would have always known that he died hating me.

Oh, yes—it was Linshiol's sort of scheme, all right. It bore her mark. The little bitch had always played the opponent rather than the board, probing raw emotions you never knew you had.

As for me, I'd always played the board. And that's why I "won".

…In a manner of speaking.

I looked down at my hand. I could see the floorboards through it.

* * *

Unlike their sheep-raising Narnian neighbors in Felimath, Doorn's people had always aped the Calormenes. Perhaps they fancied themselves cosmopolitan, in that narrow way that only provincial people do.

Whatever their reasons, Doorn's kings had spared no expense with Tash's temple. Orry had built it like one of the cathedrals from Narnia in the north: open, airy, and light. Its flying buttresses had supported walls four hundred feet tall, and they say that at noon the windows admitted so much light that the temple seemed like an open pavilion. Even the Calormene ambassador had fallen to his knees when he saw the great glass window at the Eastern Altar—Tash surrounded in a halo of gold, his foot-talons gripping the world while eight arms stretched out to the little black figures that represented the Lone Islands' people. One of his hands scattered coins among the figures who bowed low and averted their eyes, while other arms waved swords, adzes, and clubs at those who dared to stand. A final arm had seized one of the figures and dangled him over Tash's mouth. The artisan had lovingly worked the victim's terror into the stained glass.

Peter had burned the place to the ground.

While I can't say I cared much either way, the destruction of Tash's temple had created a problem. The Pevensies had decided to try Fyren's surviving brother, Alexander, for treason and witchcraft, and they'd needed a building that could accommodate the crowd.

Susan wouldn't be present, and Edmund had promised to assume her responsibilities. You'll see the significance of this shortly.

Ultimately, Edmund had decided upon the St. Wickham's Minster, an old Cluniac building that the Bishop of Doorn had commandeered when King Orry expelled him from the city center. It was the largest church in Doorn, which wasn't saying much. The architects had built it in the days before flying buttresses, and they'd paid the price in blockiness and solidity. The ceiling was a single vault. The circular window above the altar barely stretched two feet across, painting a small circle of light on the floor. The remaining windows along the ceiling were just as narrow. Painted stone dogs crisscrossed each other along the sides of the columns like woven netting, and the archways were painted in black and white stripes, like lemurs' tails. Figures protruded from the walls, bearded and snub-nosed with oval faces.

The sculptures mirrored the piggish creature that sat at Tash's feet. He snuffled as he picked through a file of parchment with fingers like sausages. I'd heard about him, from time to time. One of Tash's more efficient servants.

Alexander stood up.

"The law…er…it offers pleadings of…ah…That is to say, criminal defendants can plead...I think—wait a moment, I have it…" he said.

Most people would have missed the way that Edmund leaned _ever _so slightly forward, or how his eyes widened a fraction, or the way he nodded to Alexander. I noticed them all. The claw tightened on my shoulder. Alexander kept stammering.

"What are you smiling about?" Tash said.

Call it defiance or stupidity, but I didn't stop smirking.

"Oh, haven't you noticed, Lord Tash?" I said. "Your servant has been coached, and not by you."

Tash ground the two halves of his beak together. They made a _scriitch_-ing sort of sound that I tried to ignore. Alexander had stopped talking, and was mouthing the words silently to himself.

I looked at the Pevensies. Peter sat back in his chair with a scowl. Edmund drummed his fingers. All three had secured the ceremonial collars around their necks. Tradition had it that these would tighten like nooses if the wearers delivered an unjust verdict. Peasant foolishness.

"You're sure?" said Tash.

"About what, Lord Tash?" I said.

"About Edmund."

"_What_ about Edmund, Lord Tash?"

"That he's coached Alexander!"

Alexander cleared his throat and began again.

"Your law code…um…recognizes a defendant's right to bring in other people to share his guilt..."

I shrugged.

"Mm…" I said. "Who knows? Chancy things, trials…Couldn't say. Maybe Edmund's prepped Alexander, maybe not, or maybe somebody el—"

Tash's claw gripped my throat and cut me off. My head swam. My eyes felt as if they were bulging outward, and I felt an urge to gag as those iron fingers squeezed my trachea. The rest of me screamed for air. Tash leaned closer, but I could only see a blur by now. My lungs were on fire. And then the fingers loosened just enough that I could smell him—the odor of rancid horsemeat.

"You will not play games with _me_, little princess," he said.

The stinging demand to cough had become unbearable, but I couldn't breathe as it was. He shook me.

"You think I'm _stupid_," he said.

_Air…_

"You expect me to believe that you revealed my plans by _mistake_? You? A Charnian queen?"

_AIR!_

"That you didn't figure it out the _instant_ you saw Earth's stars?"

_Please…_

"Nod," he said.

I nodded. The claws released, and I gulped air. And coughed. And coughed. The darkness receded.

Alexander was waiting for Edmund's reply.

"Impleading," Edmund said. "It's called impleading, and I'm inclined to allow it."

The Just King looked to his siblings.

"Concur?" Edmund said. "Dissent?"

Peter hesitated. His jaw had tightened, and he no longer leaned back. To my surprise, Lucy spoke first.

"Concur," she said.

Several more seconds passed.

"Abstain," Peter said at last. "I'd be careful if I were you, Ed."

Tash wheeled toward the demon sitting at his feet. He prodded him with a talon.

"Screwtape!"

The demon looked up from his parchments. He snorted and adjusted his spectacles.

"Yes, m'lud?"

"I brought you as a legal expert."

The demon puffed up a bit at this, rubbing a hand over his pimply mouth.

"Well, I suppose I _do_ have some experience in that field, Sire—"

Tash interrupted him by grabbing his head and pointing him at Alexander.

"So _explain_!" Tash said. "Now."

"Er…I don't-em…"

Edmund threw back his robes and leaned forward, threading his fingers together.

"And whom does the Defendant wish to implead?" Edmund said.

Alexander grinned.

"My brother, Fyren."

Tash shrieked and looked around for someone to hurt. Fortunately, I'd backed off, so his claws alighted on Screwtape instead. Tash scratched parallel lines across his back and knocked him down for good measure.

Edmund's expression didn't change.

"I'll allow it," he said.

"Dissent!" growled Peter.

"_Concur_," said Lucy.

Peter looked at Lucy as if she'd just announced that she wasn't a virgin. Even Edmund seemed surprised at the speed of her agreement.

"Right…" said Edmund. "That's…em…two to one. Motion to implead Fyren carries."

The ensuing uproar drowned Edmund out. The gallery filled with shouts from Fyren's supporters-including Fyren himself. The new "governor" of the Lone Islands clutched one hand to his heart and pointed the other upward—a typical pose for aggrieved Lone Island noblemen when giving a speech. Like the Calormenes, I'd always found the Lone Islanders a tiresomely theatrical people. In any event, Fyren's voice didn't carry in the commotion.

Guards stood at every exit. Like most of the audience, I'd drawn the natural conclusion from their gold-plated mail, silver helmets, and ostrich plumes: Edmund had stationed them for spectacle, as a formality. I'd overlooked their battle scars, and the oak clubs that they carried in lieu of ceremonial battle axes. All the better to discipline an unruly crowd

Edmund finally raised his voice.

"Percy?"

"Majesty?" came a chirp from ceiling.

"Empty the building."

Shoving, curses, and a few battered heads followed.

* * *

When the noise had subsided, Fyren stood alone before the Pevensies, his brother, and a "jury of his peers"—the nine Electors who would nominate Narnia's next king if the Pevensies couldn't agree upon a successor.

Several minutes passed.

The crowd's body heat had left with them, and Fyren's breath turned to fog. He wore only the skintight stockings and short jerkin that young, athletic men preferred in the Lone Islands. I watched his knees shake. Fyren's cloak lay on a bench at the room's far end, but he didn't stoop so far as to walk across the hall to get it.

"Cold?" said Edmund.

"I'm f-I'm fine."

In a slow, exaggerated motion, Edmund picked up a heavy fur coat that he'd hung from the back of his chair and wrapped it around his shoulders. He clasped the pin. A few moments later, he produced a pair of fur-lined gloves, and slid his hands into them with equal deliberation.

The Just King smiled.

"_So _glad to hear it," he said. "Now then…I believe you're already familiar with standards of proof in witchcraft proceedings?"

Fyren's eyes widened.

"You wouldn't dare to—"

"No," Edmund said. "We wouldn't. You see, Fyren, we don't use pressing or suspension in Narnia. We're not savages."

Lucy gave her brother an odd look.

"Wait a minute. What's s—"

"_Nothing_," Edmund said.

He spoke quickly and sharply, leaving no doubt that _this_ part of the conversation wouldn't go any further. Lucy took the hint and shut up. After Edmund turned back to Fyren, Tash jabbed Screwtape in the back with one of his dorsal hands.

"What's he playing at?"

Screwtape's mouth bobbed open and shut like a goldfish, as if he could suck the answer out of the air around him.

"I—I'm not sure, exactly…"

"_Find OUT!_"

Edmund sent a servant for something. For a while, no one in the gallery spoke. The room filled with the sound of Screwtape's rustling paper—silent to everyone but the three of us—as the demon mumbled and flipped through Edmund's law code. Every so often, he licked his finger. The saliva bled through the paper. It left green smudges.

"Well?" Tash said.

"I don't…" Screwtape said. "…it's just so _odd_, Highness. Like an eight-year-old's understanding of English law filtered through Scholastic philosophy, mixed with Robert's Rules of Order_, _and rerouted through the _leges barbaro_—"

_THUNK!_

I'd winced in anticipation several seconds before Screwtape's head collided with the desk.

I don't think that I realized until that moment just how thoroughly Aslan had stacked the deck against us. Many years before, I'd written Digory off as a fool, and a fool he was—as a child. Frank and Helen were fools throughout their lives, but then, Aslan probably hadn't intended them for the positions they'd blundered into.

At first, the Pevensies had seemed an improvement and nothing more. I'd seen Peter's type before: Narnia produced young paladins with an aptitude for violence by the hundredweight. I'd dismissed Susan as frivolous. Our meeting in Orry's laboratory had altered my assessment: she was clever, yes, but hopelessly deluded. I couldn't get a read on the youngest. Edmund, on the other hand, had seemed an interesting case—he saw angles that most didn't, and preferred to move in the shadows. Of all the Pevensie siblings, Edmund reminded me most of Charn…but only a pale echo of the place.

And then I watched Alexander's trial.

When you've schemed and killed for thousands of years—as I have, and proudly—you forget that the moves that seem natural _now _didn't always seem so.

I'd watched Pevensies' childhoods through Edmund's eyes, and I'd seen the kings and queens that they'd developed into. I'd failed to put those two pieces together. You see, children from Edmund's world didn't step out of their artificially temperate homes into a land of dirt floors and hearths. The Pevensies had managed it. Without tutors. Without twenty-seven siblings bent on murdering them before they could crawl. Without Tash's help, and with precious little from Aslan, either.

It suddenly struck me that Edmund was playing an unfamiliar tune by ear. I wondered, if only for a moment, what he and his siblings could have accomplished in their own world if Aslan hadn't plunged them into his private morality play.

Of course, the best moments lay ahead.

Screwtape still hadn't looked up from his book.

"If you don't do something," Tash said, "then I will."

Even as he said it, green wisps of smoke leaked from the ends of Tash's feathers. They billowed until they reached the thickness of a man's arm, and then developed hands of their own. Tash spoke, and the arms coiled to attention like a family of snakes.

And then they buried themselves in Alexander's chest.

Nothing happened for a moment or two. Slowly, though, his speech slurred. He seemed to have trouble moving his tongue. A muscle in his face twitched. And another.

"A l-…a l-…_l..i..e…_"

"What?" Edmund said.

"A l-_lie_," Alexander's mouth said. "Fffy….F…Fyren'ssss _n-nnnot_taaa witchsssshhhh…."

Alexander's head lolled to one side. Edmund jumped from his seat.

"Guards?"

I found myself smiling. You don't become Narnia's foremost jurist without recognizing a possessed witness in a witchcraft trial, and Tash's impatience had made him sloppy. He'd taken possession too quickly. He'd also forgotten the church's reliquary.

The misty green hands probed deeper, wrenching at Alexander's guts until he jerked like a puppet. The guards still held him. He screamed a mixture of Charnian, _Olzgil_, Latin, and another language I didn't recognize. The eyes rolled back in his head. He tried to bite one of the men holding him and received a thump in the ribs for his trouble. No matter. The misty hands kept puppeteering, yanking him toward Edmund despite the pain. His face had reddened.

Edmund merely nodded to a bat sitting in the rafters. The creature bowed and fluttered in front of the struggling men, guiding them out the door. Edmund cleared his throat. His voice practically dripped officialdom.

"I'm disregarding Alexander's retraction for obvious reasons," he said. "I think we all know who's trying to disrupt these proceedings. There's no need to speak his name aloud."

The Electors murmured their agreement. Tash plucked his own feathers, leaving a line of black skin down his arm. I'd never seen him this angry before, but then again, I'd never seen him losing. He kicked Screwtape again, presumably for luck.

And now it was Fyren's turn.

"I refer the Court to the Lone Islands' substantive law," Fyren said. "_Liber __Fénechas_. Thirty-fourth chapter, twelfth verse."

Edmund retrieved a thick book from under his chair. It had a gold clasp and fine silver knotwork that curled across a leather cover.

What followed was a volley of legal nonsense couched in _Bérla Féini_—the incomprehensible jargon that Edmund's brehons relied upon to give judgments. I find the law tedious at the best of times, but Edmund cared about such things, so I suppose I'll give you the general outlines. Feel free to skip it if you like:

Fyren fired the opening volley when he argued that Percy was Edmund's agent. Although Edmund was King, he was also a judge, and a presiding judge couldn't present evidence at a trial. Therefore, neither could Percy.

Wrong! replied Edmund. Percy was submitting evidence of his own volition.

Unfortunately, Fyren wriggled out of that one, too: Under the law, Percy was a freedman with property—or, at best, a _flaith_ (if you considered honorary knighthood equivalent to nobility). He couldn't submit evidence against a _tuath_, or under-king, unless he was acting on the sovereign's behalf.

Edmund's fingers skipped across the vellum pages. They seemed to follow the curve of the letters-elongated, jagged things that some monk had scratched with a reed stylus. Edmund found the answer soon enough: Unlike the Electors, who held their land in exchange for military service, Fyren claimed the Lone Islands by dint of governorship. His claim had emerged from the tradition of the _ministeriales_—the serf-knights who had served Narnia's first kings as administrators. Thanks to tanistry (albeit a legally fictionalized form), the Lone Islands had passed directly from the last of Frank's line to the Pevensies. Fyren was a nobleman, but not an under-king.

Fyren riposted nicely: if he wasn't a _tuath_, then the under-kings in the jury didn't qualify as his peers. After another fluttering of pages, Edmund replied that the _tuaths _did qualify as noblemen, but not vice-versa. Thus, they _were _a jury of his peers. At that point, Fyren shot his final bolt: if his title emerged from a _ministerialis _claim, then he fell completely outside of the _Liber Fénechas'_ social categories. Edmund couldn't prosecute unless he could assemble a jury of governors. To which Edmund replied:

"Too bad."

As I said earlier, you could have skipped the explanation.

With the preliminaries thus disposed of, the first witness came forward.

Percy fluttered from the ceiling and sat before the court. The ensuing "examination" was obviously rehearsed, but no less entertaining because of it.

"Hem. Yes. The oath. _By the authority of Aslan, the inexorable, the irresistible, I stand here against Governor Fyren in true witness, unbidden and unbought, as I saw with my eyes and heard with ears that which I pronounce against him_…"

Percy emphasized the word 'governor' when he came to Fyren's name. Fyren's fists tightened.

"You conducted surveillance of the accused?" said Edmund.

"I did," Percy said.

"And did any of his behavior strike you as odd?"

The bat seemed to hesitate, drawing the moment out. He replied slowly in measured syllables, like a theologian coming to a tricky point. Two of the Electors leaned forward.

"…Not at first," he said. "But then I discovered…ahem…something _unusual_…."

Tash, too, leaned forward. The same thought must have crossed his mind that had already crossed mine: the melodrama was almost too perfect. I wondered what would happen if the bat botched it. The Electors would tolerate judicial manipulation, but not a farce.

Edmund's voice hardened.

"Go on."

The Just King's tone must have jogged the bat to his senses. Percy replied matter-of-factly this time.

"Ah…hem…yes. The fighting-bird. Fyren kept a cockerel, but never brought it into the ring."

"Of course I didn't!" Fyren snapped. "Abelard belonged to my father—"

"The accused will kindly shut his—"

A gavel smacked hard against the bench. Everyone quieted down long enough to notice that Lucy had risen from her seat. She dipped her head to the Electors before continuing.

"We all know what you thought of your father," she said. "I quite agree with Edmund. Under the circumstances, I'd consider your obsession with that bird odd."

"How dare—"

The gavel banged.

"And _do _be quiet unless we call on you, Fyren," she said. "This isn't Parliament, after all."

I may have imagined it, but I thought I saw a ghost of a smile as she sat down again.

"…Um….right," Edmund said. "Thanks...Go on, Percy."

Percy fussed with a stray tuft of downy hair. He glared at Fyren before continuing.

"_Governor _Fyren visited the bird's cage every night," he said.

Fyren laughed. It was a snorting sort of guffaw—loud and obnoxious, as he'd intended it. It echoed.

"That's it? That's all of it?" he said. "I was feeding it! 'Denial's always stronger than accusation', remember? Your law, Edmund."

He clicked his feet together and raised two fingers, like a schoolboy reciting a pledge.

"Right," he said. "'_By the Lion's Mane, I am guiltless both of deed and instigation of the crime with which Percival charges me_'…"

And then he laughed again.

"…Come _on_, Edmund," he said. "Does this need to continue? I can pull in a hundred oath-helpers if necessary___."_

"No," Edmund said. "I have a better idea."

The doors at the end of the hall creaked open, and four men walked in. They carried an iron cage with black bars. A cockerel sat in it. He was a fat, glossy creature, and his feathers gave off a greenish sheen. The men strode past stone carvings of monkeys and a deer with a scorpion's tail.

The cage clanged when they set it down. The bird screeched.

"Yours?" Edmund said.

Fyren hesitated. He licked his lips as he stepped around the cage—walking gingerly, as if treading around caltrops. I followed his eyes as they looked from one part of the bird's body to the other. After a minute or two, he squatted on his heels and unlatched the cage.

"Abelard?"

The bird cocked its head to one side and looked at him. Fyren picked it up, pumping the cockerel's legs up and down as trainers do when they exercise fighting birds. It responded as it always had.

"Yours?" Edmund repeated.

Fyren looked from Edmund to the bird, and back again. More hesitation.

_What are you up to, little king?_

"I…yes, it seems to be," Fyren said.

"Good," said Edmund.

It all happened in an instant: A guard grabbed a jug of water and dumped it on the cockerel. The bird fell from Fyren's hands. It writhed on the floor for a moment or two, and then it began screaming.

It began screaming words.

Moans and gasps mixed with a stream of profanity. As the creature wriggled in the puddle of water, it heaped abuse on the Pevensies. Their parentage, love affairs, petty squabbles, betrayals.

Fyren just stared. I'd seen that expression before. Charnian courtiers wore it when they received their execution warrants. Sheer incomprehension.

Edmund, on the other hand, was smiling. He addressed the jury.

"Holy water," he announced. "Familiars can't stand the stuff. Three guesses what that means."

And then Edmund turned to his brother.

"_Res ipsa loquitur_, wouldn't you say, Pete?"

The High King didn't reply. The bird had begun speaking in tongues by now.

"Please note that the accused is no longer oath-worthy," Edmund said.

"So noted," said Lucy.

Peter didn't say anything. His brother and sister stared at him and waited. Finally, though-

"…So noted."

"Good," said Edmund. "In that case, _maleficium _is a bootless crime. There will be no talk of compensation."

So…death by burning if the jury cooperated. Or perhaps they'd tie him in a weighted sack and throw him from the Giants' Rocks. In either case, it couldn't have happened to a better person, although death by precipitation would have been moderately more entertaining.

Then again, canon law discouraged capital punishment, and Edmund was just the sort of humorless prude to spare Fyren's life on a legal technicality.

Tash's head snapped to Screwtape.

"What's going on?"

"I don't—it's-it's not one of ours! I don't _think _so, anyway…"

"You don't _KNOW_?" Tash shrieked.

"Well, Sire, we _are _a large organization. Unnecessary duplication…plausible deniability…information speedbumps…fiefdoms….Parkinson's law…"

"FIX IT!"

Screwtape squealed as the claws dug into his skin. He shouted probably the first thing that came to mind; I know because I'd done something similar, once.

"_She _knows, Sire!"

Unfortunately, I did.

Tash's claws twitched in my direction.

"It's probably a Talking Beast," I said quickly. "One of Edmund's servants. He must have found a bird similar enough to Fyren's fighting cockerel that they couldn't tell the difference."

Tash's eyefeathers rose.

"After all," I said, "how many Lone Islanders can _really _tell one Beast from another?"

"Screwtape."

By now, the demon in question had curled into a ball, moaning and rubbing his scarred back.

"Screwtape!"

"Y-yes, Sire?"

"How many of _our _people are on the jury?" Tash said.

"Just the Lord of Glasswater, Sire."

"Take him," Tash said. "Slowly, this time. Correct for interference from the relics."

Misty hands extended from Screwtape's fingertips. They worked slowly, coiling through the Lord of Glasswater's ears and mouth until they disappeared into his body completely. Screwtape's fingers made tiny, delicate motions as he manipulated the invisible strings.

The jurors were already murmuring for conviction. Whatever Tash was going to do, he needed to do it soon.

"The book," Tash said.

I handed him the copy of Edmund's legal code. He flicked through it while Screwtape attached the remaining barbs.

"You want to play, boy?" Tash said. "Let's play."

The Lord of Glasswater jerked to his feet.

"King Edmund," he said. "May I address the Court?"

Screwtape had done his job well; Edmund gave Tash's puppet an odd look, but allowed it. The Lord of Glasswater continued.

"I think that the members of this jury can agree that this…creature…has cast doubt on Fyren's loyalty," he said.

Eight nods from the other jurors.

"…but Narnia is a land of Talking Beasts," he said "And—"

Percy's angry squeak interrupted him.

"Are you implying fraud, milord?"

"Oh, no…" said the Lord of Glasswater, "…or at least, not on King_ Edmund's_ part."

True though the veiled accusation was, Percy bristled. Still, I doubted that that this particular germ of paranoia could mobilize the four extra votes that Tash needed. But he'd already considered that.

"…Of course," the Lord of Glasswater continued, "suspicion alone shouldn't overturn such weighty evidence. Then again, we shouldn't be hasty, either. As for myself, I couldn't deliver a _conventional _verdict against Fyren…"

Edmund's quill arrested its journey across the parchment. The other Electors stopped talking.

"What are you getting at?" Edmund said.

Screwtape pulled the necessary cords, and the Lord of Glasswater grinned nastily.

"This jury can't deliver a verdict, Your Majesty," he said. "Not enough evidence, I'm afraid….Might I suggest a judicial duel instead?"

And so, the trap was sprung.

I considered the pieces in play: Much as they feared witchcraft, the Electors also feared royal power. For all the legal bickering, Fyren was actually one of their own. They didn't want to sentence him. Now Tash had given them an escape hatch.

And what an escape hatch it was. If the Electors thought the same way that their fathers had when I'd ruled Narnia, they probably longed for the good old days when the judicial duel held sway. Back then, a nobleman could end a land dispute by hiring a stand-in to fight on his behalf in a "fair" wager of battle. (Strangely, Aslan always seemed to "favor" the nobles' professional killers over the peasant freeholders. Imagine that.)

If Edmund reinstated the wager of battle, his own system of precedent-based law would ensure that the decision would filter down. Juries would recede into the background again. The _hólmganga_ would replace them from Archenland to the Lantern Waste.

Tash chuckled.

"Your legal system or the Lone Islands," he said. "Your choice, boy."

Edmund would never have sold out Susan for either objective; I was certain of that much. He'd tear every law to pieces and let Aslan's Narnia burn first. Fortunately, he didn't need to make that choice. His trial had discredited Fyren enough to sabotage any political marriage.

...Or perhaps not. The Just King never had much faith in his sister's judgment. Perhaps he still thought that she'd stay the course.

But even if Susan abandoned Fyren, that still left Edmund with a choice: the Lone Islands or the Pevensine Code. I suspected that he'd choose the former. He needed Fyren off the throne and a reliable vassal in his place. Otherwise—

Edmund stood up. He braced his arms against the bench and took a deep breath, as if steadying himself for something.

"Our, um, ideas of primogeniture and—ah-and sacral kingship…" he began.

And paused.

Cleared his throat.

Rubbed a broach at his neck until he forced himself to stop. I saw the fingers tremble.

"Narnia's laws of succession stretch back to tribal times," Edmund said. "They emphasize one point: the sacred power of royal blood. My brothers and sisters have it, because Aslan chose us."

Tash groaned loudly. He whispered something about high-flown speeches and bowing out gracefully. Screwtape snorted. Tash replied with his own wheezing laughter.

"…Aslan will only spill our blood if he needs to," Edmund said. "But the privilege isn't absolute. It can't shield us if we abuse our power. If we fight for an unjust cause, Aslan's protection vanishes."

_Idiot! If you're doing what I think you're doing…_

"My previous objections to the trial by battle still hold," Edmund said. "Aslan couldn't care less about the outcome of any particular duel. If a criminal defeats an honest man, Aslan won't intervene. But Aslan will intervene in OUR duels."

Tash cuffed Screwtape into silence.

"In case you haven't noticed," Edmund continued, "Aslan tends to be moralistic. He doesn't want a wrongdoer on the throne. If I support an unjust cause, he'll let me die. So….with that being said, I'm prepared to put my own life on the line against Fyren. No stand-ins. My cause against his."

"AAARGH!"

I covered my ears, but Tash's cry burned through my skull anyway. His claws skewered Screwtape and held him at head-height above the ground. The demon squirmed and squealed like, well, a stuck pig.

And Edmund _did _have him, dead to rights. Politically, Fyren might have survived a botched witchcraft accusation. He couldn't survive killing Edmund in a duel. Most of all, the Electors couldn't overturn Edmund's trial-by-jury system now. There would be no precedent from this case.

"A duel can only proceed by mutual consent," Fyren shot back.

Edmund knitted his brows, affecting puzzlement.

"Wait a tic, Fyren," Edmund said. "I'm not sure I understand. You have what—three stone? No, four, I think—four stone and four inches on me. Choice of weapons, too. Don't tell me you're afraid…?"

A cheap trick, yes. But then, so are the burning peppers that the Lone Islanders prod into their cockerels to make them vicious. Not that it mattered. Fyren saw through Edmund's jab at his manhood even as he rubbed his meaty hands together in anticipation. You don't need to trick the willing.

"Quarterstaves," he said.

Edmund's smile dropped. Evidently, he'd forgotten the Lone Islands' national sport.

_Stupid_, I thought. _Stupid!  
_

But no… Edmund was cautious, wasn't he? He always triple-checked before making a move. He must have known! He must have-…The little fool would kill himself for what? Words on parchment?

"That's right," Fyren said. "I won't make you a martyr and spoil my chances with Susan. I think she'll forgive me if I shatter a few ribs, though."

Peter opened his mouth, but it was Lucy who shot out of her seat first.

"Forgive you?" she said. "My sister wouldn't come _near _you after this. The trial by battle means nothing."

Fyren nodded. It was a calm, slow nod. Eyes narrow.

"In that case, Queen Lucy, a quarterstaff can also kill."

Right about now, you're probably wondering why Susan didn't come to Alexander's trial. I can give you two explanations: mine, and Edmund's. I don't think you'll like either one.

Deep down, I think Edmund believed that his older sister lacked the stomach for governing. As far as he was concerned, it ended there. He'd offered to take the responsibility off her hands, and she'd accepted. Simple as that.

With deference to the Just King, I disagree. Susan's makeup contained more of her younger brother than either would admit.

Frivolous? Yes.

Idealistic? Disgustingly so.

But not stupid. In the weeks that lead up to the trial, Susan had seen what Fyren had done to the Lone Islands. She'd visited the burning stakes, and the graves. Most of all, she understood her brother's ability to manipulate the legal system. From where I was standing, Susan stepped aside and allowed Edmund to take his best shot. Unfortunately, she'd overlooked her brother's nonexistent sense of self-preservation.

Ironic, really. Of all the men that the Gentle Queen had known (and "known"...) I think that Fyren actually loved her.

More the fool he.

"Well," I said. "That's game."

Tash drummed his claws on his beak. They clopped as if they'd struck hollow wood.

"Oh, no," he said. "Not yet."

* * *

Edmund had already slumped onto his cot when Tash appeared with me. Even if I hadn't lived in his room for the past few months, Edmund's bedchamber would have been easy to find. Barring hermits, only someone from Earth would have reserved several rooms for himself in the way that Edmund had. Curious that a desire for privacy had made him more conspicuous…

Edmund faced away from us. He stared at the ceiling, focusing on nothing in particular. Not resting, though. His breaths were sharp.

"YOU WANT HER?" Tash shouted.

Edmund half-jumped, half-fell off the bed. It took him a few undignified second to scramble upright. He grabbed at the dagger in his belt.

"W-what?"

Tash yanked on my hair until I looked up, running a claw under my chin. He advanced, pulling me along with him.

"Do. You. Want. Her?"

Edmund's eyes widened. He backed away, knocking over a small table at his bedside. Its contents fell: a green glass cup with circular knobs on the surface like a cluster of grapes hit the floor. It shattered. Red wine pooled on the wood.

"I…" Edmund said, "what do you—NO! I mean...is this—"

Tash sighed.

"Look," he said. "It's very simple, Edmund. I want to play a final game. If you win…"

Tash waved his hand. I felt my own face twist into a suggestive leer, and tiny fingers pulled my tongue until it licked my lips. Edmund seemed frozen in place.

"…Then I forfeit my rights to her," Tash said. "You can do whatever you like—or perhaps, in your case, _not _do. Ha-ha…heh. Of course, if you lose...well, I think you've heard enough bedtime stories to figure that out?"

At first, I thought that Edmund wouldn't answer. That he'd just stand there forever with that stupid, panicked look on his face.

But then he clenched his hands.

"And if I refuse your offer?"

"Oh," Tash said, raising a claw. "That's easy. Then I just start playing with her right here, while you watch."

Strange…Self-preservation should have kicked in by now, if nothing else. I should have begged Edmund to save me. I didn't.

Pride? I don't know.

"Thirty seconds," Tash said. "Normally I'd give you more time, but you just _had _to go frame Fyren for witchcraft and spoil my timetable."

Edmund rubbed the brooch around his neck, and I finally recognized it as a small reliquary. He found his voice again.

"No," he said. "I don't think so. If you want me badly enough, you'll wait until I've considered your offer."

Tash's laugh gargled in his throat. He swept his hand toward the bed like a man holding a door open.

"Ahhhh…Then go ahead, King Edmund," Tash said. "By all means, _think_."

Edmund approached the bed warily. As soon as he sat down, Tash kicked my legs out from under me, and I fell next to him. I glared at Edmund when I pulled my face from the covers, daring him to say anything.

He didn't.

"Think _carefully_," Tash said.

To Edmund's credit, he was doing just that…or trying to. I wasn't hopeful. From what I'd seen in our games, Edmund preferred time to consider his moves. He didn't improvise well under stress.

Of course, every rule has its exceptions.

"You must be joking," Edmund said. "Or you think I'm an idiot. Jadis's game depends on who-knows-how-many little calculations. That's basically what you've been doing with real people for thousands of years."

"Oh, no," said Tash. "You misunderstand. I can't intervene directly, you see. Deep Magic and all that. I want you to play Jadis."

"What?" I said.

"Wait," Edmund said. "That makes no sense at all."

Tash's eyebrows bobbed.

"Oh no?" he said.

"If I win, Jadis would get her freedom," Edmund said. "She'll deliberately lose."

Tash jabbed his finger into the air inches from Edmund's face.

"Ha!" he said. "Ha-aha-ha! You'd _think _that, wouldn't you?"

His beak made a crackling sound as he grinned.

"You see, Edmund, I enjoy watching people squirm. Maybe you've noticed. In your case, it's easy: I get to watch you risk your afterlife for a woman who turned you into an emotional cripple…But Jadis? Now that's something else again. That's where the true artistry shows itself."

Tash's feathers rustled as he leaned over me and came face to face with Edmund. One of his claws combed through my hair. He paused to straighten an errant strand, like a little girl fussing with a doll.

"Both of you made the same mistake, actually," Tash said. "Let's be honest, Edmund. For all your talk about Jadis's conscience, you don't _really _believe that she'd stick out her neck for anybody, do you? Of course not. And neither does she. World-weary little cynics, the pair of you. Ha!"

Tash leaned closer.

"You want to know the truth?" he said. "Anyone can be reached. You, Peter, Jadis…whoever. Even Aslan, if I had the power. It's just a matter of finding the right wounds to salt."

Tash stroked my cheek with the back of his hand.

"Look at her," he said. "She still doesn't believe me. My fault, really. I haven't told her what I'll give her if she wins."

Tash lowered his mouth to my ear, and I couldn't completely suppress a flinch. One of his talons popped the seams on my sleeve one by one, like a child plucking daisies. His breath was cold.

"_I'll free your mother and Iaida instead_," he whispered.

Edmund must have seen my reaction. He tensed. Tash giggled.

"Ha!" Tash said. "Look at her _now, _would you? Even if she loses deliberately—oh, and she might, you know; she's quite cowardly when you come right down to it...but where was I? Ah...Even if she loses on purpose, she'll do it knowing that she's selling her mother and sister to me. Can you see the beauty of it, Edmund? You two will play your game, and no matter what happens, nobody wins. But you'll both do it, won't you? Of course! Because you have no choice."

Edmund stood up. Tash caught his shoulder.

"I'm getting impatient," Tash said. "No more thinking. Choose."

"You'll wait—"

"Five...Four…"

"You're bluffing."

"Three, two…"

"Give me—"

"One…"

"I have a condition!" Edmund blurted out.

_IDIOT!_

Tash's gurgle in the back of his throat intensified. He sat back in Edmund's chair and crossed his feet over the bed.

"Go on, Edmund. I'm listening."

"I've played a lot of games with Jadis," Edmund said. "I've seen her memories, too. Let me pick the scenario."

Tash clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

"I expect a fair match," he said.

"Oh, don't worry," Edmund said. "If anything, Jadis'll have the advantage."

For once, Edmund had managed to leave his face blank—which unfortunately told Tash that he had something up his sleeve anyway. But Charn's gods were always greedy.

One of Tash's arms slapped his thigh. He threw back his head and laughed in a high-pitched whinny that transformed into more throat-gargling whenever he breathed in.

"You should see yourself!" said Tash. "So _grim_. Oh, all right! Pick your scenario."

Edmund finally allowed himself to smile.

"Charnian succession crisis," Edmund said. "Year 21034 of Zardeenah's lunar calendar. Jadis versus Linshiol."

Tash stopped laughing.


	20. Chapter 19: Edmund

**Chapter 19: Edmund**

They buried Jadis's father on a beautiful spring day.

Forty of his children—give or take—had turned out to cry crocodile tears. They wore clothing of every color and hue, including a few questionable choices: green silk stockings, yellow satin dresses with fur lining, black velvet hats that looked a bit like berets. Their tailors had cut the sleeves long and the chests baggy to show off extra fabric. Consequently, none of the clothes seemed to fit quite right, as if the wearers were all children.

Jadis smiled at me from behind the casket. She wore a long black dress with a high collar, and stood out from the crowd like a grackle in a flock of songbirds.

_Edmund?_

_Mm?_

She sighed.

…_I don't intend to lose._

_I know_.

_If it's any consolation, I wouldn't have ended it this way. __It seems…wasteful._

_No, Jadis, that's not really any consolation.  
_

As soon as the funeral finished, I decided that we needed to pack. Linshiol owned fortresses in the hill country, each stuffed with a year's worth of provisions. I'd seen enough of Charnian household politics to know that the palace would become a death trap. By the time Linshiol's relatives finished playing tag-with-daggers, they'd face a well-entrenched enemy. Oh, they could burn the farmland, but as long as Linshiol held the walled towns, they couldn't risk a full-scale attack. Even if Linshiol's relatives _did_ attack her, though, she could count on her own serfs' loyalty once they saw their crops and houses destroyed…

When I reached out to Linshiol's mind, I realized that she'd reached the same conclusion. That's when I reconsidered my strategy. Originally, I'd expected to control Linshiol like I'd controlled the other monarchs. The game allowed me to do just that. It _expected_ me to.

I didn't.

Linshiol knew more about Charn than I ever would, and Jadis had been right after all: she and Linshiol _were_ the final product of centuries of scheming and political murder. I remembered the other rulers whose minds I'd touched during our games. When I'd made contact with Kulzphazur's consciousness, or Peueriuz's, I'd found them sluggish, as if I was trying to think with three hours of sleep. I'd felt aggression, but a dull sort.

Linshiol's mind crackled with energy. Imagine the sensation of drinking twenty cups of tea and standing in the middle of an orchestra while each instrument plays a different tune as loudly as possible. Now imagine a person who can keep track of each tune simultaneously.

More importantly, Linshiol had come within inches of beating Jadis before. If everything worked as expected, "inches" would be all I needed. I withdrew my tendrils from Linshiol. From that point forward, I kept only the lightest of contact with her, and concentrated most of my consciousness in Affa instead.

_Jadis?_

_What?_

_Your mother and Iaida…are they worth it?_

_You know the answer to __that__, little king..._

_I guess so…Funny, really._

_What?_

_If you win, we'll both be dying for a worthy cause after all._

_You always had a masochistic streak, didn't you?_

_A mile wide._

Linshiol and I moved to her family lands in Bramandin and dug in.

While Jadis focused on her relatives in the palace, Linshiol prepared for war. The task suited her. I learned that even before her father's death, the girl had pincushioned targets for hours before breakfast and occupied herself with rather less ladylike pursuits thereafter: hunting, horse riding, and the like. These she practiced publicly, and her soldiers seemed to admire her for it.

Not so with her swordplay. For that, she shut herself away with tutors in her private sparring-ring: a gravel pit with wooden barriers that must have been sixteen feet high if they were an inch. From what I could glean from Affa's memories and a few discreet inquiries, she used to sparred in public as well. She'd stumbled once, though, and a man had laughed at her. She'd had him blinded.

And now she sparred in private.

We rode through her lands in the afternoons. Charn's sun filled the sky. It was deep crimson, almost maroon, and it never seemed to completely set. Even the nights seemed more like a red twilight. The moon only came out close to midnight. Between the evening's wavering heat haze and the regular thump of our horses' hooves on the rust-colored earth, the rides were almost hypnotic. I say 'almost' because we still needed to keep a lookout for the venomous creatures that crawled, wriggled, and, in one case, _rolled_ through Bramandin's underbrush.

As we rode, Linshiol's eyes roved across the landscape. She'd stop and point to a hill or river, and the questions would start: If an army camped on that hill, could we take it? How could we keep our ranks steady? If they retreated, how would we pursue?

I learned quickly that she didn't expect answers. Like most of her conversations, information flowed one way: Linshiol would pose a question, answer it, and move on. Affa's own memories counseled silence. I generally followed his advice, but then again, Affa had always been a poet rather than a soldier. And, in my opinion, a rather spineless one.

During our rides, Linshiol also quizzed me about the subtler nuances of our mutual acquaintances—their desires, their aspirations, and even their senses of humor. Anything, in short, that didn't reveal a weakness that she could use against them. She found those on her own. This time, she expected answers, and in return I learned a bit about the relationship between Linshiol and her husband. Something that Jadis had said once about queens and their secretaries seemed particularly appropriate: while I can't quote the exact words, it went something like "a good queen chooses servants who compensate for her weaknesses". By that measure, Linshiol was a 'good queen'.

If anything, she'd done Jadis one better: Servants' loyalty must be purchased. Affa's came with marriage.

"If we needed to ford this river—" she began.

"They'd wait until half our army had crossed before they'd attack," I said. "…But I suppose they might hit us midstream if they were stupid. Anyway, we'd probably moor our ships higher up than the enemy, facing the sun. If you're looking for a fight, though, you'd do better than to meet an enemy near a river crossing."

All right: I admit that I hadn't been paying attention when my answer had slipped out. Then again, perhaps I was getting tired of her lectures. She stared at me for a few moments.

"You…er—you're a good teacher," I said.

She kept staring. Finally, she gave a little 'hmph' and started her horse at a canter again.

"As long as you're loyal," she muttered.

I should note here that Charnian contains two words for loyalty. The first, "_zorrge"_, is actually closer to "reliable" in the sense that English employers use it (or, if you prefer: "loyal-for-expected-advantage"). "_Torgi"_, on the other hand, implies the sort of loyalty you'd expect from a dog or slave (the Charnian lexicon doesn't draw a strong distinction between the two).

Linshiol, as you've probably guessed, had used _"torgi"_.

While Linshiol didn't share Jadis's skill with people, she didn't seem to need it, either. She leaned on Affa's advice like a crutch, but it served her well enough, and anyway, she had other skills to compensate. Professor Lewis once asked me who Narnia's greatest general was, and I named Peter without hesitation. My brother, to put it bluntly, was born for war: in all my life, I've only encountered one person who had a better instinctive grasp of organized violence. Unfortunately, Linshiol wasn't Narnian. If she had been, I would have answered Professor Lewis differently.

If only she'd shut up about it once in a while...

* * *

Several nights passed. From the reports filtering in from the palace, it seemed that Jadis was putting two thousand years of brooding to good use. She'd moved quickly. Usually, Charn's great houses controlled the appointment of their god-kings through the city's two major clan factions, whose names are both unpronounceable and irrelevant. As you can probably imagine, this presented Charn's rulers with a dilemma: kill too many of one group, and the other would become too powerful. Kill too few, and either group could murder you.

Jadis had sidestepped the issue by allowing one of her brothers to take the throne first. Idiot that he was, he'd invited her into the city of Charn itself to destroy both factions.

It reminded me of a train wreck, really: you can see it a long way off and still can't stop it. And yes, the pun is intentional. Not particularly funny, though.

With my options closing by the minute, I worked up the nerve to drift into Affa's mind while he slept beside Linshiol. Oddly enough, I didn't see Linshiol at all when I first opened my eyes. Affa slept with his back to her, and his face to the cold air. Zardeenah's moon shone in through the periwinkle gauze on our window. Like Narnia, Charn had no central heating. We had a hearth in the center where a copper cauldron hung from chains attached to the ceiling, but even the hearth's fire had died by now. Blackened wood was piled in the stone bowl under the cauldron.

Probably to postpone the inevitable, I squinted and tried to make out the room's contents. No luck. I stood up. My feet touched stone, and I almost jumped back into bed when I felt the chill. Like most of the things in her life, Linshiol's floors were Spartan: simple gray stone, unadorned even by carpets. A ledge two feet high and a foot thick protruded from the wall, ringing the room. I consulted Affa's memories: a replacement for chairs when Linshiol needed to address an audience.

I walked along the ledge, ignoring increasingly desperate demands from my feet to get back into bed. The walls didn't have the blue ceramic paneling from the main palace that had reminded me of Wedgewood pottery. But they weren't barren. They contained scenes painted in a few bright colors: a griffin sunning himself, craning his neck to the sky while he lay amid stalks of barley. The background was red, and looked warm. Even the tops of the columns had red and white horizontal stripes.

I ran my fingers along the mural, and felt them stick on a surface that had once been slick, but was now chipping. A sliver of paint moved beneath my fingers as they brushed past. The sliver broke off. It made a delicate _flit_ as it hit the ground, and I withdrew my hand.

"_Vandalizing_ the place, are we? Hm?"

I actually jumped when I heard it. Nobody was there.

"Who…?"

"Here."

I followed the voice to a cage near the window. It could have been gold or bronze; I couldn't tell in the moonlight. Something very like a monkey sat inside, arms crossed over its chest. Watching me.

I knelt beside it, keeping enough distance that it couldn't reach me. As I'd discovered over the past few months, Charn's animals had a worrying tendency to be vicious, venomous, or both. The creature leaned on the bars. It pushed its face against them, and I noticed ears like bats' wings.

"Did you—" I began.

Its eyes shot through the bars.

"GAH!" I yelped.

I fell backwards. The eyes hovered a few inches from my face. I suddenly realized that they were connected to stalks, like a snail's or a hermit crab's. They blinked.

"Human?" it said.

It sniffed.

"_English?_"

If my heart had been beating a mile a minute before, it was almost ready to burst now.

"Wha—who...?" I managed.

The eyes retracted through the bars again, and reinserted themselves in the sockets with twin _plips!_ that my younger sister would have probably found cute under different circumstances.

"My dear Edmund," it said. "Don't tell me that the King of Narnia's never heard of a _Psammead_?"

"I…um…"

The creature rubbed the bridge of its nose and muttered something about the deterioration of the educational system.

"Look," I said. "I have no idea what you are, or how you know my name—"

"Then you should hold your tongue and wait until I tell you!" it snapped.

The creature waited.

Blinked.

Blinked again.

At last, it seemed satisfied that I wasn't saying anything further.

"Now then," it said. "As _I _see it, Mister Pevensie, you're in a rather tight pickle. Don't know how to broach the subject of the Deplorable Word, do you? Eh? Thought not. Probably planning to wake that young harridan and bring the issue up point-blank, weren't you?"

I nodded.

"Pah!" it said. "You English males. Selectively blockheaded, the lot of you! Too much coddling as children, I shouldn't wonder."

I raised an eyebrow.

"And _who_ exactly—" I said.

"None of your business!" it said. "All that matters is that I'm trapped in this rather unpleasant cage in an Aslan-forsaken, rotten world where my magic doesn't work and whose only redeeming feature is acres and acres of fresh sand…"

His eyes seemed to glaze over has he said the word, and I noticed a slight swaying back and forth.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh…" he sighed. "…_S-s-s-s-a-a-a-a-a-nd…_"

"Er—"

"Oh," he said. "Right. Here's my proposal. You open this cage, and I'll tell you how to get your point across to the charming little psychopath on the bed."

As I considered the proposal, something occurred to me.

"Aslan sent you, didn't he?"

"Sent?" he said. "_Sent?_ Of all the preposterous…_Marooned_ is more like it! The officious, pompous, sanctimonious, insensitive—"

"Shush!" I said. "All right! I'll let you out."

And I did just that, carefully avoiding the fangs just in case. As soon as I released him, he started waddling for the window.

"Wait, what about the—"

He pointed a hairy hand toward the courtyard below.

"Scrying pool," he said. "This is Bramandin, remember?"

"But how…Oh. I see."

He started climbing down. If I'd confused him for a monkey before, his performance now would have dispelled any doubts. He moved like a drunken sloth, with the added problem that his potbelly shifted his weight at awkward moments. The creature's eye-stalks peeked over the window-ledge once more.

"Just curious," he said. "Once you warn Linshiol about the Word, how do you plan to deal with Jadis?"

"We'll see, won't we?"

"I suppose I would," he said. "_If_ I cared, mind. Don't, though. Good luck anyway."

"Thank y—"

"You'll need it."

And then he was gone. I turned back to the bed.

Linshiol looked so much like her sister that night that it bordered on the uncanny. She had the same fine bone structure—the high cheekbones over sunken cheeks, the small nose that made her face seem flatter, but only if viewed from the side. Only one thing separated the two: I'd never seen Jadis asleep. Linshiol's face seemed so relaxed as she breathed in…and out…and in. They say in Archenland that a severed head doesn't plot; I submit that a sleeping one doesn't either, and it looks far prettier in the bargain. But that's neither here nor there, since I woke her up.

Linshiol's eyelids fluttered open. She rolled over and revealed another point of similarity between herself and her sister: black-in-black eyes or not, she had the same viper's glare.

"What?" she snapped.

While she rubbed sand from her eyes, I took her hand and led her to the courtyard.

* * *

Bramandin's scrying pool was perhaps twenty feet across, an oval rimmed with copper that corroded faster than the high priests could replace it. I couldn't see much through the murk, but Affa's memories told me that somewhere at the bottom, Bramandin's black water oozed from an underground source. Tunnels, perhaps. That would explain the blind, white creatures that scuttled along the sides. One of them floated on the water's surface, dead. The priests wouldn't fish it out till morning.

The creatures avoided the glyphs and stone carvings on the pool's rim. Eight stone faces with wide mouths like the grotesque masks from Greek theater were spaced at intervals along the sides. Water lapped into their mouths. The openings made a choking sound. Between them ran gylphs: _Pa_, with its whiplike double curve; _Un_ and _Or_, rods with branches that looked like exotic organs; _Ged_, which looked strangely like a capital "g" except for its anemic middle and fat ends…and all the others, but arranged in words that no Charnian knew.

They say that you shouldn't stare too deeply into the Pool. My attention lapsed, though. I found myself looking into it, and saw hints of the beings that had dug the Pit: the things from whose company Tash and Zardeenah had fled, and whose claws had planted the Wood Between the Worlds in the Older Times. They moved as black shadows through the Wood, and on too many pairs of legs. Their names could bring madness…

"Affa!"

I shook my head. Linshiol waited a few paces behind me, shivering in her nightgown. She took a step backward. The puddles of water from the pool were already crawling toward her uncovered feet.

"Your sister knows the Deplorable Word," I said. "You don't think she'll use it?"

Linshiol moved aside as a fat puddle jumped from a crack in the floor. It slapped the ground inches from her foot, and made angry slurping sounds.

"We've been over this before," she said. "My sister doesn't have the nerve."

I'd been sifting through Affa's memories while we spoke. Finally, I found something useful.

"I knew her before you did, remember?" I said.

Linshiol's eyes narrowed.

"…Yes," she said.

"Did she tell you about the fox she owned when she was seven?" I said. "No? I suppose she wouldn't. Affectionate thing. Nuzzled her when she slept, and all that."

Linshiol snorted.

"Always looking to others for comfort," she said.

"Well, yes," I said. "Until one of her brothers took it. An older one, so she couldn't do anything about it. Nursemaid backed the prince, of course."

"And…?"

"And they found fox's body the next day," I said. "Someone who didn't enjoy sharing had thrown it out the window."

Linshiol straightened.

"You know your problem, Affa?" she said. "You're soft-headed. It was a fox. An _animal_. You think my sister would destroy _Charn_?"

Oddly enough, her tone sounded almost desperate. As if she hoped I'd just say "no" and let it rest.

"Let's see, shall we?" I said.

And with that, I cut a line across my arm and let the blood drip into the pool. At first, the white, slimy things on the sides squealed, rushing to the center and bobbing their mouths as they tried to lap it up.

The black waters formed hands that drove the creatures off. They crushed the few that stayed, and then the hands melted into watery tongues, and drank.

_Your blood is sweet, Prince of Charn. You wish to see?_

"AFFA!" Linshiol shrieked. "What did you _DO?_"

Normally, she would have had good reason to worry. The sky gave the future abstractly: a record of events, a map. And like a map, it revealed its secrets to anyone who knew the code. The Pool, on the other hand, gave glimpses into future lives. Its prophecies shifted like its waters; futures foretold in the pool could change. This would have made it very attractive but for one thing: its appetite for royal blood. And lives.

But it could only take its payment if it fulfilled its obligations. There, I had an advantage. I motioned to Linshiol to come closer.

_You wish to see?_

_You wish to see?_

_You wish—_

"Show me Linshiol's life in ten years."

The pool was blank.

"Show me mine."

The pool was blank. Linshiol gasped.

"Friataz's."

The pool was blank.

"Miatray. Flivryx. Bershoidrii. Dalpicyw."

Blank.

"In ten years from now," I said, "show me the life of _any_ Charnian who isn't Jadis."

Blank.

The water boiled. The white creatures shrieked and writhed. I felt something tug at the edges of my consciousness—something beyond Jadis's game, and beyond even Tash.

_Desssccceitful! Cheat! CHEAT! _

I grabbed Linshiol's wrist and yanked her toward the steps. She didn't stand on ceremony. We were both running now. With her free hand, Linshiol clutched her right ear and cried out as the voices in our heads grew louder. By now, though, I'd learned to take mental invasion a bit more in stride. Slightly.

_EDMUND! Brood of a human mother in Charnian skin! CHEAT! Filthy little CHEAT! Your dreams are ours. Your soul will putrefy in the Garden of Swine. The Toothed One will gnaw it!_

I slammed one door after another behind us. The voices grew fainter. We were both panting. I rubbed my throat and found that despite sensations to the contrary, I hadn't actually regurgitated my pounding heart.

"Well…" I said.

Linshiol was quiet. She stared at the hall's frescoes of white-skinned youths vaulting over bulls.

"I suppose you'll believe me now—"

"_Edmund_?" she said. "…A human?"

"I…er—"

Her eyes widened, and her shoulders shook. The few tendrils of my mind still lodged in hers went berserk, as if someone had jammed them into an electrical socket.

"You _dared _to touch me when Affa—!"

She lunged for the dagger in my hand. I jumped away, but her fingers closed around my leg and yanked me off my feet. She crawled onto my chest, one hand trying to pry the dagger from mine while the other fought to reach my throat.

"What?" I said. "Wait! No! I stayed out of his consciousness when-"

Linshiol froze. And of course, I'd just given her the final piece of the puzzle. Linshiol's thoughts raced through her mind's corridors, like guards securing a prison. I tried to withdraw my remaining tendrils, but they didn't move quickly enough. That quicksilver intelligence snapped them up, and pinned them there. Linshiol got off me.

She was still shaking when she slumped down again. And she just stared at the wall. And stared.

And stared.

"I'm…dead, aren't I?" she said at last.

"Yes."

"And this is a game."

"Yes."

She breathed in deeply. It caught in her throat.

"And the-…the players?" she said.

"Jadis and I," I said. "The rest of Charn's dead. It's been dead for thousands of years."

"And _she_ killed it," Linshiol said.

"Yes."

Linshiol didn't speak again for a long while. I watched her breaths quicken, though, and her fists slowly curl into balls. Something burned at the edges of my consciousness, and I realized that the bits of my mind still trapped in hers were channeling her anger outward.

"She _KILLED it!_" she screamed. "Killed _US!_ Me…Affa…didn't matter, did it? DID IT? The whole world with that filthy Word she learned from _him_..."

Her fingers twisted into claws, and she slammed them against the wall. Fingernails chipped. Linshiol seemed to notice me again. Her voice grew quiet; the same tone that Jadis had spoken in before she struck me years before. Linshiol smiled—crookedly; a broken smile—and touched my cheek.

"You know what my sister paid for it, _don't_ you?" she said. "Do you want to hear about it, human? What _things_ she did for the Word that none of us would do?"

I took her hand and brought it down again. Gently.

"No," I said. "I don't."

Linshiol turned away, and laughed.

"…And I'll return like a chesspiece to his box when the game ends, won't I?" she said. "Funny…You don't get the joke? This is my soul's vacation from that place. Hilarious, isn't it? A _vacation_! And I didn't know it…"

A pause. She hugged her arms to her chest. In fairness, it was cold, and her nightgown didn't look like it kept out the night air very well.

"I'm…I'm glad I don't remember, of course," she said. "The stories they told me…as a girl, I mean, about that place…"

With her back carefully turned away from me, Linshiol moved her hand in front of her eyes as if she was straightening her hair. She wiped her face instead. And then, she seemed to remember that the strands of my consciousness were feeding her emotions back to me. Her voice hardened.

"Well, what would you know, anyway?" she said. "Forget it."

"So…" I said. "What now, Empress?"

It was eerie, really: I felt a flurry of energy from her mind, and a sudden coldness. Calculation stacked upon calculation.

_Knows-future-interests-coincide-probably-royalty-already-planned-knows-Jadis-has-tendrils-in-place-pieces-his-opponents…hmm._

"You're only playing against Jadis?" she said.

So…another opportunity to exploit the situation. I'd feel guilty later. Never mind that now.

"No," I said. "Against Tash as well. For another world."

She smiled, and turned back to me. Her skin had already returned to its usual shade of pale.

"You have a plan," she said. "What is it?"

"I need information first," I said.

"Don't you know it already?"

"I do—or I'm pretty certain, anyway," I said. "Affa doesn't, though. And since I'm not sure how much we've just muddled with the rules, we'd better do this by the book."

She nodded.

"What do you want me to tell you…him?" she said.

"The stars predicted when you'll die," I said. "What's the date, exactly?"


	21. Chapter 20: Jadis

**Chapter 20: Jadis**

Fortune favors the ephemeral.

After my brother's acclamation as Emperor of Charn, he'd ridden the whirlwind. The goodwill of others, the favor of the army — these were the things that Ipamir's rule rested on. He'd forgotten that friends who give you the throne can just as easily take it away. Not a surprise, since Ipamir had never learned the talent of command…

…which is why they'd chosen him, of course.

But I was perfectly willing to help him, wasn't I? Charn's two clans were no obstacle. I handled the _Cinxir_ and the _G'Macalza_ for my brother. We won the _Cinxir_ over with titles, offices, and lands; they became my brother's vassals. Naturally, the _G'Macalza_ resented our favoritism. They rebelled as I'd expected them to, and I crushed them. Duly chastened, the patriarchs of the _G'Macalza_ accepted our gifts and bound themselves to our service with spells and oaths. The clans had acclaimed too many Emperors for my taste, and frightened my brother as well. A timid boy, really, when not with his concubines.

But how could he repay me? Not with the Imperial lands. Our siblings wouldn't stand for that.

So I went to another sister, who died a few days later from _Jugiza _with a _Falschin _chaser that gave her prophetic visions before her body stopped working. Her name escapes me. In any event, she wanted Linshiol in the picture, so I ordered Ipamir to grant Linshiol another husband. It worked: Linshiol saw a chance to ally herself with Momao, my only talented brother. She sent him a marriage proposal.

In return for my "help", Linshiol sent me soldiers. I used them to seize the Nobloh Nanbah, with its endless fields of wheat and well-fed serfs. The soldiers of the _Cinxir_ went unwillingly to their posts when we stormed the last bastion. I realized then that I couldn't trust them.

When I turned to conquer Ondoh, though, Linshiol barred my way.

Fine. I turned back to my new province and started reforms. The nobles there cared more about robbing their people than creating a strong state. That I could cure. I appointed a governor. He was an old soldier who'd bathed Charn's streets with _G'Macalza_ blood; just the sort of man to make the Nobloh Nanbah's nobility scream. He did his job marvelously. Too well, in fact: my new subjects began to hate me for it. That, too, I could cure. After the purge, I set up a regular court of law and ordered my former governor decapitated in the town square and fed to the dogs. That satisfied the nobles.

When I received news that Momao's marriage negotiations with Linshiol had broken down, I sent a proposal of my own. Ipamir wouldn't survive much longer, and I needed to consolidate. With most of my internal enemies dead, I concentrated on the college of priests who would acclaim the next emperor. If I could just control the nomination process—

Ipamir died.

I scrambled. Momao had driven Linshiol from Charn proper, but that left me with a single province between two hostile armies. Worse, I fell ill. As the college of priests argued over the next emperor, I shivered under six layers of blankets and had feverish dreams where black-and-white cubes fought against old legends that had transformed into clouds. (Don't ask me why; I don't know). My own candidate lost the nomination just as my fever broke.

That left Momao's candidate and Linshiol's. Unfortunately, Momao chose that moment to get assassinated.

Time to negotiate.

* * *

The Temple of Tash declared a week long truce.

For as long as any Charnian could remember, the Temple had provided the emperors with magicians. Charn's priests controlled knowledge. It was as simple as that. Priests interpreted the law, wrote the histories, performed the surgeries, composed the poetry. (They also claimed that their spells could cause an army to wither, but I'd always dismissed this as sales talk).

Like all monopolies, the priesthood was at its strongest when the State was divided. They sold their disciples to the highest bidder, and with a succession war in full swing, even candidates who hadn't yet read the future in wrens' songs or in the movement of mists could fetch incredible prices. Princes came from across Charn for this. Most sat in special boxes despite the indoor venue, draped in gaudy silks and taffetas. Affa was among them, sitting somewhat awkwardly in a crowd of priests. Two feelings coursed through my younger body: bitterness and desire. My older self had outgrown both.

_Careful with your money, Edmund. The old men are shysters, you know…_

_I'll manage, thanks._

I laughed.

Books hung on every wall, secured in leather satchels attached to pegs. Their covers hung open, revealing pages that blazed with color: woad, indigo, lapis lazuli, white lead, and yellow ochre. The covers were carved ivory. Unlike the Narnians, though, my people had enough taste not to inlay their manuscripts with gold. Most of the students made do with wax tablets.

_Eustace would love this place…_

_Who?_

_A relative. Anthropologist's son. _

_What's a—_

_Never mind. Forget it.  
_

We watched the debates first. Priests-in-training played word games. They argued in extemporaneous quatrains about the Powers Above, the demons that spoke to us through our weapons, the inviolability of oaths sworn on the wind and rain, and other pointless things. Younger candidates took notes. Two hundred styluses scratched tablets. The nobles yawned, ate figs, and stroked the hair of their concubines.

Finally, the magic began. The change was immediate; noblemen leaned forward, scratching their beards. As the priests closed one eye and recited the _glám dichenn_, their buyers appraised them with the same glances that they gave fighting birds. I felt excitement building in my chest, and remembered that I hadn't seen _real_ magic in millennia. That, and I'd forgotten just how _real_ my younger body could seem in the days before I'd bitten the Apple.

Unfortunately, Edmund chose that moment to catch my eye; he nodded toward an exit on the far side of the hall. I followed him. As we stepped through the doorway, I heard a bull scream as one of the priests spoke the _aer_ over it.

Ah, well. Another time, perhaps.

We passed through a room for the youngest members of the Temple—the candidates who'd only just begun their twelve years of study, and who hadn't yet memorized the Three Hundred Stories. A lacquer slab hung at the front of the room, displaying the Charnian alphabet and each glyph's corresponding numerological information. A plate of pastries shaped into glyphs waited on a brass platter for the best students.

Edmund tapped Affa's fingers on the desk as he passed, running them along the rim of an inkpot carved from an ox's horn. He opened a second door that lead outside. I followed him to the Temple garden.

It was warm, unlike most of Charn's nights. The priests had let the garden grow wild, to remind the plants of the forests we'd cut them from. Rowan berries hung in red bunches for the younger candidates. Fungi of all sorts crawled up the bark while domesticated stoats poked their heads out from tunnels near the roots. Their eyes glowed purple from the tree spirits that possessed them—even the immobile spirits in trees enjoy getting out now and again, or so my tutors told me. The younger, stronger specimens patrolled near the _jugiza_, ready to kill the red moles that could feed on the plant without getting poisoned.

"Well…Affa?" I said.

"You've, um, wanted…me for a long time, haven't you?"

That feeling again: a sinking sensation in my chest. In the branches of a yew tree, a two-headed _Sonf_ bird watched us. Its plumage stood out in the moonlight, feathers alternating between lavender and green like a checkerboard, except for the feathers on the long white neck that lead to its male and female heads. Zardeenah had fashioned _Sonf_ birds from the mud in the Older Times as a symbol of fertility. Of all the birds in Charn, only the _Sonf_ could bear young without mating.

_What are you up to, little king?_

He didn't reply. 'Affa' did, though.

"What if we could work something out?" he said.

I tried to laugh at him, but my younger self didn't cooperate. _Her_ eyes widened. A thrill of something halfway between fear and hope flowed through our body. She was remembering the heady warmth of the air on another night. While I struggled to crush the feeling, she replied.

"What do you mean?"

He chewed his lip.

"You remember that time in the garden?" he said. "Where I read love poetry and you said—"

_Aha!_

Finally, I felt a surge of anger from my younger body. I answered for both of us.

"I know what I said," I snapped. "And you _left_ us—me—for Linshiol."

"I had no choice. You know that."

…Which was true, and both of my selves knew it.

He shrugged. It was the sort of helpless gesture that Affa always managed to pull off perfectly. Artlessly. In the court of Charn, that was a rare thing indeed. My younger self was mollified slightly. I knew better. Affa was never the lovable clod I'd imagined him in my youth, and anyway, I knew who was pulling the strings. But if I was having trouble controlling _my_ body, why wasn't Edmund…?

_Affa giving you trouble, little king?_

_Not really. Seems he wants this as much as you did._

_Liar._

The moonlight must have touched the _laiad_ vines, since they began their nightly song. It sounded like a whispered sigh, yet musical for all that. They say that those who listen too closely give in to their desires: even as a child, I'd heard rumors about the swaying dances that the priests held in the moonlight under their spell.

I tried a different approach.

"Did Linshiol send you?" I said.

Edmund hesitated. Or Affa. Whoever he was.

"Not exactly."

Another spark of anger from my younger body. Goo-o-o-d. I could work with that.

"Ah," I said. "And you heel like a good little dog, don't you? Are you supposed to seduce me, then? Hm?"

I swaggered up to him and touched his cheek.

"You and Linshiol think I'd trade a night or two for the throne?" I said. "You _are_ a fool if you believe I'll—"

"How long would it take you to beat Linshiol?" he said.

"I...what?"

He kept walking, and I followed him. We stepped through a small grove of _hubar_: tall plants with stalks a yard high, each carrying a bulb that glowed like a tiny green lamp. Generally friendly. They flickered cheerfully as we passed, and each in turn touched us with the Sight. It felt like a massage.

"How long?" he said. "Assuming you can gather up the wreckage from Momao in record time, I figure at least a year of campaigning. Add another to consolidate your rule here in Charn, and you've given us plenty of time to fortify Bramandin…which, incidentally, means you'll need one _more_ year to assemble enough troops to take us out. Oh, and another campaigning season beyond that. And what if we win? "

"If you win, I'll use the Deplorable Word," I said.

"Exactly. And then I'll be dead."

A flurry of calculations ran through my younger self's mind. Purges, marches, countermarches, logistical magazines, army assembly. When I caught a wisp of her thoughts, I would have felt a tingle of fear—_if_ I'd had control of our body. I didn't.

_Affa's right…_

_Of course he's not!_ I snapped. _This is Linshiol talking._

The suggestion bounced off like a rock against plate armor. Unfortunately, her connection with me was never conscious: my thoughts came as suggestions or possession, not dialogue. Her thoughts only seemed like a conversation because I interpreted it that way, and the process wasn't mutual. In any event, she pushed me to the outer edges of her mind. I heard her words as if they were spoken through water.

"Affa, are you…taunting me?"

"No," he said. "I'm suggesting an alternative."

My younger self jumped for the bait with nauseating eagerness. That she managed to maintain a nonchalant tone didn't give me any consolation.

"What do you have in mind?"

"How long d'you think Linshiol has?" he said.

"I…I'm not sure what you—"

"A few years," he said. "I've seen her horoscope. You'll get the throne either way."

_Edmund, stop it!_

_Sorry. Can't._

By now, I'd managed to beat through most of the mental defenses in my way. I planted a whisper of suspicion. Unfortunately, she didn't keep it to herself.

"Prove it," I heard myself say.

Edmund/Affa spread his arms out, gesturing to the garden around us. In the yew tree's branches, the _Sonf_ bird purred. Imagine a dove's coo, but more trilled.

"We're in the Temple, aren't we?" he said. "You know the formula: 'I swear by Tash, the Irresistible, the Ineffable. May I die if what I've said is false.'"

He didn't die, of course. A jolt of emotion I couldn't quite identify shot through my younger self, and my own panic added to it. She struggled to keep her voice level.

_He's not Affa!_ I screamed.

"You're...telling the truth," she said.

_Idiot!_ _The real Affa died with Linshiol. He __left__ you—Us! He's dead! They're all dead! They've been dead for—_

"Yes," he said. "I'm telling the truth. So let's talk about this. Linshiol doesn't know that I'm meeting with you. If you allow her to take the throne, she'll live her remaining years believing she's won. Once you seize power, you and I…um…we could…"

It was delicious, really. Something I might have devised myself if I'd been Affa. And my younger self agreed. I'll give Edmund credit: the manipulative bastard had managed to strike _just _the right note. Oh, I'll grant you that Charn and Affa would have been tempting enough offers on their own, but the prospect of ascending the throne while my sister lay on her death bed thinking she'd beaten me…_that_ was savory.

…And I would lose.

Except for one thing. My younger self narrowed her eyes.

"You'd betray her like that?"

"It's not betrayal," he said. "My wife wants the throne, and so does the woman that I…I love…well, that I've…always loved, I guess…"

— A brief spike of emotion here. The halting speech, the not-quite-obvious stammering, the awkward shyness that fit my expectations so well…I wondered why my younger self couldn't see it for what it was. My fault. _My_ fault! Narnia's king had been dangerous enough without Affa's sixth sense about other people's emotions. And that human abacus _knew_ just how to use his pawn, didn't he just? I kept beating at the walls of my younger self's subconscious. For all the good it did me, I might as well have rammed my head against Charn's main gates.

"…and anyway, I'm not going to let Charn get destroyed," he finished.

My thoughts merged with my other self again. A lever. At last, a lever. I grabbed it.

"So you're not doing this for me," I said. "It's for Charn, isn't it? Always the _honorable_ one, weren't you, Affa?"

"I…"

"You've sworn that Linshiol's going to die," I said. "You haven't sworn that you love me."

_Wriggle out of __that__, little king._

If Edmund wanted to swear the oath, he'd have to relinquish control and let Affa swear it. _If_ Affa loved me in the first place, which I doubted, it would still take a few moments for Edmund to regain control. That would give me time to—

I saw a scowl spread across his face. Disgust?

A pause.

"I…do."

The reply had come quickly, and the mask never broke. Edmund had been planning it for a while, then, and regained control faster than I thought. Was I that predictable? Or perhaps—

Never mind. I already felt my younger self turning to gooey mush, and needed to concentrate on fighting it. I thought of my mother's death, and Iaida's, but the mind sharing my body hadn't been there when Tash had promised them to me. When I wasn't in direct control, she only felt my presence as a vague feeling. Instinct.

She brought herself closer to Affa's lips. Tentatively.

_Edmund, stop this._

_I'm afraid that's not possible._

…_Please stop this._

_Sorry._

Those feelings again: tingling lips, breath quickening, warmth, the sensation of melting into another person. All the other vile—

Linshiol would win. Edmund would win.

_No! _

She ignored me. Her heart hammered in our chest. Her tongue touched his. With my last ounce of willpower, I pushed through the barriers and shaped my warnings into thoughts. Or something close to thoughts.

_He—Wait! _I screamed. _The Deplorable Word_—_Affa died on the same battlefield! Ask him for his own horoscope! You won't get him. Ask—_

My younger self's thoughts wafted back to me in a lazy drawl.

_Mmmm…What battlefield? What—Ahh…yes, that feels nice…don't…care…anyway…_

We stopped.

Everything stopped.

A white rift tore through the center of the garden, and then the world began melting. The trees oozed onto the ground, and the ground flowed into an expanding sinkhole on the far side of the grove. Weasels, flowers, birds, and anything not deeply rooted spun through the air as if a whirlwind had caught them. The statues shimmered. They dissolved, and I felt myself dissolving with them.

* * *

I blinked.

Candlelight. Evening. I smelled the musty odor of old wicker and yew beams. I felt a chill, too, and squinted at a circular hole above us that must have been a chimney. The room was circular, I think. I nearly bumped into a support pole that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Narnia again.

That's when I realized what had happened. My chest constricted. I fought it down. As my vision adjusted, I walked toward a five-foot-ten-inch blob that became Edmund. He was still rubbing the sand from his eyes when I grabbed his throat and backed him against the wall.

"You hypocritical _bastard_," I hissed. "You _want_ me, hm? _Do you_?"

I wiped a hand over my face and then smeared the kohl and rouge on Edmund's lips. My vision had cleared enough that I saw his eyes widen. And was I shouting…?

"I've seen your thoughts," I said. "Oh, yes! You think I haven't? Well, you _bought_ me with my sister's life, didn't you? And my _MOTHER'S?_ Aren't you going to take your prize, then, you disgusting little—"

Edmund cringed. For the first time in a long while, he reminded me of the boy who'd cowered in my dungeons. I savored it. Drank it in. I grabbed his hand roughly, ran it over my own cheek, and then down my shoulder to my hips. He was shaking. I drew close, next to his ear. Edmund pulled away. I didn't let go. Tash was hooting and clapping in the background. His four hands banged together like a small crowd.

"You think my dreams were bad before?" I whispered. "You'll never sleep again. I can promise you that. I'm going to give you nightmares like you wouldn't believe—"

"Tash!" Edmund said.

Tash's hooting ceased. _That_ was what stopped me from expending what little power I had left to produce waking dreams until my reserves gave out and I faded into nothingness. Silence from the Deceiver. Involuntarily, my grip loosened.

"Eh?" Tash said. "You _have_ Jadis, boy. What more do you want?...er… Not disappointed with the product_, _surely? Shall I—Mmmm….Aha! Ha!—Shall I _prepare_ her for you, 'little king'? I'd _ever_ so enjoy it."

It had seemed casual…at first. And then I realized that it was forced. But what…?

"You forgot to free her mother and Iaida," Edmund said.

_Wait, what?_

Edmund's voice had sounded soft and gargled. I released his throat completely, but never mind; Tash had heard it well enough. Tash's tongue flicked out like some frenzied earthworm and dappled his beak with saliva.

"Er…Come again?"

Edmund rubbed his throat and coughed. His voice sounded firmer now.

"You know what I mean," he said. "In the real Charn, Jadis killed everybody and Linshiol died before getting crowned, right?"

Tash looked away, and snorted.

"You're going to make me spell it out for you?" Edmund said. "Fine. Linshiol would have only lived a few years anyway, and if Jadis's magic hadn't killed her, something else would've. I gave her as much time on the throne as anybody in her situation could expect. As for Jadis, she didn't get the throne in the _real_ Charn until Linshiol died anyway, did she? This way, she rules over living subjects. _Both_ are better off."

Tash scraped the bottom barb of his beak into the roof of his mouth until it drew blood. Drops fell to the floor in a series of wet _plat_s.

"If you think about it, they both won," Edmund said. "Except for Affa. Couldn't fix that, unfortunately. And since your agreement conditioned our prizes on _winning _rather than destroying the opponent..."

Silence. Tash's wheezing broke it. It might have been laughter, but I doubted it.

"Well," said Tash. "Mmm-hm-mmm. Enjoy my progeny, then…_King_ Edmund."

Edmund actually paled. Under normal circumstances, it would have earned him an indignant slap, or something similar. Not now, though. Still innocent, that boy, and always in irritating ways.

Tash's beak clicked. He raised his eyefeathers, giving one of those odd smiles with his eyelids that looked like a wink. His hand twirled mock-dramatically in front of his face, wrist limp.

"Oh-h-h-h…" he said. "Dear me, boy. Haven't heard the _rumors_, hmmm...? Well! Let me enlighten you! They say there's demonish blood in the House of Charn, you know. Didn't think I had _all_ my fun with the last generation, did you?"

When I opened my mouth to reply, Edmund held up a hand. I stopped.

"Later," Edmund said. "We'll discuss this later. Or never, preferably."

Tash's hand stopped twirling, and he swept it—along with the other three—across the ground in a low bow. He leered at me.

"Well…Good_bye_, my dear," he said. "And good riddance, of course. You were fun while you lasted, I guess."

He turned to go. Tash's nails tick-tacked over the floor and rug, which they slashed as they passed. Gray stone peeked through the tear.

"Tash…" said Edmund.

The demon stopped at the door, patting the threshold with his palm. I noticed that Edmund was rolling a game piece from hand to hand. The Just King smirked. Through sheer force of will, probably.

"What?" Tash said.

"…You lose."

Tash's shoulders stiffened. He didn't turn around, but his claws tightened across the wooden frame. They dug four furrows with a harsh ripping sound, and the splinters tapped on the ground. And then Tash the Inexorable, the Irresistible, the Power Behind the Throne of the God-King…vanished. I noticed for the first time that my mouth was open.

* * *

Three seconds later, Edmund collapsed. He lay on his back on the bed, shuddering, and rubbed his hands over his body. Frantically, as if he was trying to kill ants that weren't there. I knew the feeling—tingling, only sharper; the sensation of something black and chalky in your bones that makes you want to peel off your skin and wring it out. He gagged, but couldn't vomit. With time, it would fade. It would never leave.

He stared at the floor, which was just as well, since I found that I couldn't meet his eyes. My own hands were shaking just as hard. I wiped off the rest of my makeup and waited until his breathing finally slowed. It took a long time before Edmund looked up, and when he did, it was a hollow sort of expression. His pupils hadn't yet shed the glassy look that came from staying too long in Charn's games. Dark rings had formed under them. I assumed that he expected me to say something, so I did.

"I…Edmund, that was—"

"Sorry," he said.

I narrowed my eyes.

"What?"

He sighed, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Kissing," he said. "Romance. Manipulation. Whatever you want to call that four-way telepathic mess. I'm sure it was as uncomfortable for you as it was for me, but I needed to...What?"

I must have stared at him for a good ten seconds before I rolled my eyes. I was too tired to laugh.

"Oh, _certainly_," I said. "Heavens forfend that you stoop so low as to kiss a woman."

Edmund tilted his head slightly to the side.

"Wait a moment…You don't—"

"I—Of course not," I said. "You're right, as usual. Disgusting but necessary. Thank you for ending it so soon."

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard Tash cackling.

Edmund frowned and deflated even further into the bed. He exhaled as he kicked his boots onto the table.

"Well," he said. "Much as I'm enjoying this windfall of ingratitude, I have a duel coming up and Fyren's probably going to kill me. I'd appreciate it if I could spend my last few hours alone."

I realized then that I'd miscalculated, and felt a sliver of regret. It didn't last long, of course, but…

"Edmund?"

"What?"

I paused at the door, running my hand along the frame before I turned back. The splinters from Tash's claws nicked my finger. Even spirits can't avoid the Dark One's handiwork.

"...Thank you," I said.

He shifted in his seat.

"You're welcome, I suppose."

I forced a smiled and dipped my head to the King of Narnia before closing the door. He deserved that much, at least. For the next few hours, his sleep was filled with nightmares, but they weren't mine.

The duel came the next morning.


	22. Chapter 21: Edmund

**Chapter 21: Edmund**

Twelve more hours. That's how long it had taken to set up for the duel. If anything, the cold, oily sensation that the game had left behind had intensified in the interim. And then there were the shadows that I saw out of the corner of my eye that disappeared when I looked straight ahead.

Like Peter, I began life believing that duels are about honor – knights fightyng over ye ladye faire, and things like that. I watched my first real duel when I was eleven. It happened in the Archen provinces; Walter De Something-or-other and Godfrey Fitz-whatever disagreed about the boundary between their fields. The duel started with clubs. These quickly broke. In the end, both men ended up rolling on the ground. Walter finally lost when Godfrey throttled him into unconsciousness, but not before Walter had bitten Godfrey in the neck and tried to gouge his eyes out. The local young men tossed the sand from the duelling field at the village girls, who squealed and pretended to cringe.

Duels are not about honor.

The sun was out. It glared off the speartips of our men-at-arms and centaurs. My face and neck seemed warm, so I rubbed them and felt the sting of sunburn. The wind blew hard that day. When it hit me, it was just cold enough to needle – the discomfort that comes on a warm day when the breeze touches sore skin.

When had I last slept? Two days? Five? Unless you counted the nightmares...

We stood in a square of dry dirt. The grains were tiny. Hundreds of footfalls had ground them together and tamped them flat. The square's borders stretched a bit longer than a boxing ring, perhaps twenty-four or thirty feet on each side.

A low wooden fence bounded the arena. Three feet tall, perhaps—just enough that the audience could rest their hands and refreshments on it. This was the only concession to comfort, though, since like all things in Narnia, the arena seemed to have been designed for inconvenience. It contained no seats or tables. Those closest to the action stood up, while those further away sat on horses. A few people watched from the windows of nearby buildings. The owners had probably rented them out, and for some reason, I found myself wondering whether the renters could have sued for rightful cessation if Fyren and I had postponed our duel.

From the crowd, Peter raised his fist and gave me an encouraging grin. I pretended not to notice how forced it seemed.

"Edmund!"

I looked back. Yes, it was Susan. She'd reserved herself a place in the front row, it seemed. Her usual rainbow of courtiers had accompanied her: yellow stockings, blue robes, red hats; men who'd braided their beards and strung them with golden beads until their necks dipped from the strain. A drummer boy. Young men in white tights. Flanged collars flopped across their shoulders like deflated red clovers. Susan was wearing black. I noticed this, also.

"Little dramatic, don't you think, Su?"

She pursed her lips and drew her head back slightly. I maintained my smirk.

"Excuse me?" she said.

"The widow's weeds," I said. "Bit much, isn't it? After all, you'll be next in line for the throne after this nonsense…'Course, you'll still need to worry about primogeniture…"

I must have been expecting her to slap me. In this, I was disappointed, if you could call it that. A teardrop dripped onto her veil, where the translucent black fabric caught it and stretched it into a blacker stain. She didn't look at me.

…When had I last slept?

"Su…"

"You're so _stupid_," she whispered. "So…"

I nodded, half to myself. My head felt lighter, busier—as if the sounds of traffic were running through it, or radio static. I found myself wandering back to the center of the field. Susan caught my hand.

"What—" I began.

"Lucy allowed Fyren's mother to visit him," she said.

Was that my stomach freezing? And the chill in summertime…

...spring? Summer?

"She did _what?_"

Perhaps Susan mistook my elevated tone for anger. Perhaps it was.

"It's not her fault, Ed. She's-"

"A little fool," I said.

"Ed…"

"What else would you call it?" I said. "His mother's probably stuffed his clothes with enough good-luck charms that I'd need a machine gun to kill him now."

She looked down at her hands, where she was twisting her index finger around her thumb like a ring. Her face relaxed, though, in what must have been relief. I could almost see the gears turning toward the wrong conclusion.

"Of course," she said. "Of course. We'll need to call this off. That's obvious-"

"'We'?" I said. "Oh, you're wrong there, Su. 'We' won't do anything."

Susan's breath caught in her throat.

"Wh-what?"

"…_You_, for instance, will sit here behind your safe wooden partition and watch the fireworks. As for _me_, I'm going through with it."

Susan must have stared at me, open-mouthed, for a good ten seconds. The strength in her fingers faded, and her grip loosened. Her voice was still so soft.

"…Do you _want_ to die, Ed?"

"I—"

Beside me, Jadis clicked her tongue.

"I was wondering the same thing, Little King."

I pulled on my sleeve, and Susan let go. And so it went.

"Edmund, wait…" she said.

Ignore it.

"Edmund Pevensie, come back here this instant—"

Surreal, almost. Ignore it.

"_Please_, Ed..."

But she daren't be louder. Just as well, since I had a duel to concentrate on, and-

"…don't leave me here."

It had been a whisper. I almost stopped walking.

At this point, I should probably mention that my own experience with quarterstaves was limited to winning a youths' competition back on Earth. Oh, and a few remedial lessons from our master-at-arms, for what it was worth.

In the distance, Fyren's banner hung alongside mine. Our heralds had nailed them to an oak tree on a hill – Fyren's golden griffin on a green field, and my red lion. They fluttered, but I was too far away to hear the _fwap-fwop_ as their fabric bent in the wind.

"Your sister's right," Jadis said.

I didn't reply.

"A tactical retreat," Jadis said. "That's all it would be. You could still preserve—"

"I don't suppose you'd believe it's a debt of honor?" I said.

Her lip curled slightly, and she rolled her eyes.

"I'd believe it from Peter," she said. "Not from you."

"Stop talking."

Jadis ran a fingernail across her cheek and over her lips. I noticed for the first time that her skin wasn't as white as I remembered it, nor her lips as red. Everything about her seemed to have dulled, except the eyes.

"You're looking more human these days," I murmured. "Too bad really...should've pulled that trick when you needed to convince the Talking Beasts...'Course, you might still-"

"You're not thinking clearly," she said. "You need rest."

Oh, how wrong she was. The world was _so_ clear that afternoon. The grass was such a crisp green. I felt the smallest breeze like breath against my neck. The sky practically blazed robin's-egg blue. It was as if my entire life in Narnia had been a dream, and the universe had suddenly become _too_ real to compensate. I looked down at my hand and rubbed my fingers together. Touch. Dirt under my fingernails. Reality. Strains of the _Vitaï Lampada_ danced through my mind.

_The sand of the desert is sodden red_

_Red with the wreck of the square that broke_

_The Gatling's jammed and the colonel's dead...  
_

"Everything's about land here," I said. "You ever notice that? _Land_ owes duties – as if we don't know the difference between dirt and people. Land and heirs and inheritance…'To so-and-so and the heirs of his body'…That's what the transfers of seisin say, isn't it?"

Jadis's eyes narrowed. When her fingernails scratched the inside hem of her silk robe, I suppressed an urge to laugh that I shouldn't have felt in the first place.

"You're not making sense," she said.

"Come now," I said. "One professional killer—sorry, _ruler_ to another: How many people d'you think I've sent to their inheritances early? Hundreds? You're the expert on these things."

Her voice hardened.

"Little King, much as I hate to use the word _unbecoming_, in this case—"

"Edmund," I said. "Or Ed. First-name basis by now, I should think...After all, you nearly sent _me_ there early, twice. Not that I fault you for it, looking back..."

Jadis said nothing. She made it a point to look toward the field, and away from me.

"What's it like, by the way?" I said.

She didn't answer. Her face seemed relaxed, but I noticed her jaw tightening.

"You know," I said. "The Great Beyond. The Sleep Where Dreams Come. You've been there a few times, if I'm not—"

Jadis turned toward me in a sudden jerk and grabbed my shoulder.

"You should _pray_ that you never find out," she snapped.

A tremor ran through her hand as she released my shoulder. Stranger still, she hadn't tried to hide it.

When she let go, though, the stress lines disappeared from her face. All except for that superior cock of the eyebrow that she always lapsed into after she'd forgotten herself. Her fingers smoothed out a stray pleat in her sleeve. She gave me a crooked half-smile – almost the way a cat would grin, except for the trace of arsenic beneath the surface.

"Ah, yes," she said. "I'd forgotten how much more _pungent_ emotions can be when you're still alive…"

Which she was - more or less - thanks to me. Another lead weight to drown my conscience with.

Fyren was warming up with a sparring partner, so I turned to watch him. A mistake.

When I was six and Peter not much older, we watched Tommy Farr beat Ben Foord for the Empire's heavyweight title. This was months before Farr outboxed Baer, mind you, and almost a year before he baffled Louis over fifteen rounds. Perhaps you saw him on film in the theaters, as a gray shadow. I saw him in person.

Tommy was a big man, but he hadn't fought like one. His movements had been quick, but not smooth. Every step had a jerkiness about it, as if he'd been a windup doll whose gears occasionally got stuck. He'd jabbed when you didn't expect him to jab, pivoted when you didn't expect him to pivot. The combinations hadn't flowed; he'd switch targets at the last moment. That's why he'd won.

Fyren moved like him.

"You're not yourself," Jadis said.

"So you think I should quit?"

I delivered the line in a lilt that suggested I'd do nothing of the sort. For a while, Jadis didn't say anything.

"...You don't intend to survive this," she said at last.

It almost sounded like an accusation. I found myself answering too quickly.

"You seem disappointed."

"It's a waste," she said.

"Just a waste?"

Jadis held her breath for a moment. She glared at me.

"What else is it?" she said. "Yes, a waste! A stupid, useless waste. What more do you want?"

"Nothing," I said.

I sighed.

It was uncanny, really: Fyren feinted the same way that Tommy Farr had done, stepped the same way. His arms had the same rhythm-that-wasn't-rhythm. He held his quarterstaff in a downward slope, and it twitched with his arms.

Fyren's opponent wore a leather helmet and quilted padding. Perhaps this gave him a sense of security, since he lashed out time and again. Each time, though, Fyren brushed the attack aside and countered. He particularly enjoyed hacking at the legs.

I realized then that Fyren didn't need his mother's magic after all.

"Just to be clear," Jadis said, "this _isn't_ suicide you're attempting?"

If I'd been paying more attention, I would have noticed the note of disgust in her voice. And something else, maybe. Or not.

"Edmund!" Jadis snapped.

"My, but you're excitable all the sudden…"

"You _do_ have a plan?" she said.

The sparring session continued. As time passed, Fyren's opponent limped more and more, while Fyren's smile widened. Finally, the man tried his own swipe at Fyren's legs. That's when the Prince of the Islands – all six-foot-three and fifteen stone of him – jumped over the strike and brought his own quarterstaff down on his opponent's head.

"Beat him fair and square, obviously," I replied.

And then I laughed to myself. It didn't sound like my voice.

I suppose that every world has its natural athletes. In Narnia, they seemed to concentrate in the Royal Houses. Corin had a knack for the barefisted punching-and-wrestling brawls that the Archenlanders called boxing. I'd seen Miraz roll up pewter dinner plates with his bare hands. Caspian could climb a ladder upside down in full armor.

Apparently, Fyren was another one.

* * *

The duel began a few minutes later – just long enough for Fyren's seconds to carry his first opponent off the field.

Trumpets blared. Seconds out.

My gait must have seemed stiff as I walked across the field to meet Fyren. This was probably because I couldn't feel my legs beyond a cold, empty sensation. Combat. Combat simplified things. Jadis was speaking quickly now. There was an edge to her voice.

"Watch your fingers," Jadis said. "If you hold the staff like that—"

I didn't hear the rest.

Fyren feinted at my head. I backpedalled.

Wrong. I'd needed to attack early. I saw what I thought was an opening near his leg, but I hesitated. He moved, and closed it.

"Watch out fo-"

"Shut _up_!"

That's the trick with staff weapons. You don't swing them like an extension of your arms as if you're Erroll Flynn. A good quarterstaff player can slide both hands to the butt end of his weapon in half a second and launch it forward. From a distance, it looks like a fisherman casting a reel. On the receiving end, it's hard to see until it's too late.

I almost ran backwards, leaning back as I did so. Fyren's staff clattered against the bottom end of my own weapon. The blow struck when my feet were close together and backpedaling for all they were worth. It nearly unbalanced me.

Jadis didn't say anything after that.

Fyren walked around me in a slow circle. Good…Too far away to hit me cleanly, anyway. He'd need to lunge for that. I noticed that he crossed his feet when he walked – every lateral step carried a moment of vulnerability. Too short.

I feinted at his head. Fyren didn't flinch. He still held the staff with the butt end upward, pointing toward his head, while the tip almost touched the ground.

Belatedly, I realized that Jadis might give me an advantage after all.

"How do I get around that?" I said.

"What?" she said.

"His guar—"

Too late. Fyren's staff lashed out like a viper uncoiling. I barely brought my own staff up in time. It smashed against the middle, between my hands. I stumbled. My arms were shaking. My muscles stiffened and wouldn't relax. Every time Fyren struck, the impact shocked my system and deepened the paralysis.

Magic, you're thinking? No. Nothing so complicated.

Fyren's foot moved into lunging position again. My own staff snapped downward to block. The strike seemed odd, though; it looped upward and around…

_No!_

A feint. Stars erupted all around me. My ears buzzed. I needed to sit down…

The staff supported me for a moment or two, and then I felt a shooting pain in my right hand. It couldn't grab anymore. I dropped the staff, and then sagged. Everything moved in slow motion. Gravity was taking its time...

_What's going-?_

Agony in my ribs. Couldn't breathe. Jaw. More pain. Numb. Blood in my mouth. Teeth didn't align. My body wanted to sob, convulse, but the constriction in my chest stopped me from doing anything.

I tried to roll away, but felt something press on my chest. My body screamed.

A blur loomed over me.

_Fyren…?_

His boot pressed deeper into my chest, which bent obligingly. And why not? The ribs were broken. Not that I noticed it so clinically at the time...

Pain. Breathe—PAIN!

Stopped. Something had stopped it. Even through my ringing ears, I heard someone speaking.

Shouting?

My last thought before I passed into unconsciousness was how very _odd_ it seemed that Fyren had slumped beside me.


	23. Chapter 22: Jadis

**Chapter 22: Jadis**

Everyone, I suppose, has a breaking point. Edmund's came long before he'd stepped into the ring against Fyren.

I'd seen it after his game with Tash. His eyes had been glassy and wide, but unable to tear up, framed by rings so dark that they were almost black. Those eyes had roved toward places where nobody was sitting. His hands shook. They'd been shaking for almost a day by the time Edmund first grasped the quarterstaff with them. In the end, I couldn't tell you exactly what lay at the root of it. The insomnia…Tash's game…the Just King's own self-destructiveness; I'm sure each played a part.

Ironic, really, if you think about it: Tash had done exactly what he'd set out to do. Unfortunately, Edmund had worn down too late. By the time he lost his grip, he'd already tied the ship's wheel down too firmly for Tash to blow him off course.

When the descent began, Edmund must have suspected that his own fate would protect him. The stars had said he'd return to Earth. He hadn't returned to Earth yet. Ergo, the duel would not kill him. Whether he still realized this by the time he stepped into the ring with an opponent twice his size is another question.

For my own part, I admit that it had slipped my mind.

In any event…

Edmund's mouth was dripping blood into the dirt. His jaw was swollen from an obvious break. His breath gurgled, constricted by broken ribs, and his right hand had become a purple bruise on the end of his arm. His body had crunched up as much as it could without making the pain worse. I found myself hoping that he wasn't very conscious. Soft-hearted, perhaps; weak of me. Very well. I never claimed to be perfect.

And standing over him was Fyren.

The crowd was silent. You'd expect shouting, or cheers. Nothing.

"Fyren!"

The Lord of the Isles recognized the voice before I did. He wheeled around. I followed his gaze, and saw Susan.

"Enough!" she said.

Fyren's smile widened.

"_Please_, Fyren…" Susan said.

"This _was_ to the death, Queen Susan," Fyren said. "Of course, now that my innocence has been proven beyond all doubt…"

A delicious little shudder ran through Susan's body. I caught a glimpse of a curled lip, as if she was going to be sick. Susan gripped the side hem of her dress, hard. Her face smoothed suddenly. An empty expression.

The crowd was still quiet.

"Of…course," she said. "Y-You're right, yes. I'm…overjoyed. You're innocent. After my brother recovers, we can…"

Fyren raised an eyebrow. Tentatively, as if he was doing an experiment, he drew the staff along the ground, scraping a line in the dirt. It lead up to Edmund's face, but didn't touch it. Susan winced. Edmund choked on what could have been blood or saliva.

"We can _what_, Susan?" Fyren said.

"Our…our marriage can go ahead—"

Fyren's grin widened yet further, into a look of what I can only call triumph. His body pulsed, as if he'd suppressed a laugh. And why not? He'd won. Never mind the witches, the scheming kings, the trumped-up charges and intrigues. He'd won!

"…Fyren?"

He didn't reply. Fyren's face remained frozen in that mask of elation. Edmund coughed again, and gasped when his lungs protested.

"Fyren?"

I heard a crackling sound, like a bundle of sticks snapping. It was quiet at first, but grew louder. And then the Lord of the Isles dropped. The crowd gasped, and shouted, and made lots of other useless noise.

Thin black rods the width of straws poked through Fyren's skin. Their ends were sharp where they'd broken off from one another, but there was no blood. His skin was white and clammy and cold. I touched one of the rods with my foot.

Veins, apparently. The blood had turned into black stone. Agate, by the look of it.

"Well, well…"

The cheering started a few moments later.

* * *

For the next few weeks, I was only dimly aware of the changes going on in the Lone Islands. Edmund remained in bed. While he convalesced, Lucy's healing philtre slowly rebuilt his body. The broken jaw took a while. The cracked ribs took longer: if you listened closely enough, you could hear the bones knit themselves back together, like stones rubbing against each other. Thankfully, Susan prohibited his doctors from "helping" the process with their bone-setting skills.

Other wounds took even more time to heal.

The physicians did their best, I suppose. Every evening, they took samples of Edmund's blood and tested it for foaminess, "greasiness", temperature, taste, texture, and Tash-knows-what-else. They must have checked his pulse for heart spasms twenty times a day. Galenic medicine at its finest.

Edmunds skin was usually flushed, and he was feverish most of the time. Small wonder. He did not sweat very much. Instead, an oily black liquid formed beads on his arms. It smelled of death, of Tash. Lucy's potion was apparently squeezing the poison out like oil from cheese. Edmund's sisters took turns brushing the drops of black liquid away with moist linen.

Like good Galenists, the royal doctors had initially concluded that it was _melancholia _and drained it off. When it leaked into Edmund's blood, the doctors had used leeches. That had lasted until the leeches started dying, or growing extra eyes and tiny arms. Now a bonfire in the garden awaited each scrap of moist cloth that had touched the substance. The fabric burned green. Throughout the treatment, I remained in the same room and waited. Perhaps because I didn't have anything better to do.

As Edmund recovered, his brothers and sisters set to work on their new acquisition.

When ruling a fief that has lived under its own laws before your arrival, you have three options: live there yourself, control it indirectly through the native ruling class, or burn it to the ground. Not surprisingly, the Pevensies chose the second option.

They had collaborators enough. Fyren's mother was obviously out of the running. The rest of the Lone Islands' nobility had supported either Alexander or Fyren, which created a rather delicate problem. Most of Alexander's supporters lost their land directly in favor of distaff branches that had remained loyal to the Pevensies. With a few exceptions, Fyren's supporters remained in place on the theory that they'd supported the Pevensies by proxy. Only his most rabid followers lost their titles.

Of all the forces at play in the Lone Islands, though, I think the merchants benefited most. Narrowhaven's richest men had always held a lot of sway through their aldermen; now, with the nobility humbled and the Pevensies casting about for allies, they saw the opportunity to turn themselves into an oligarchy.

Naturally, they took it. Oaths were sworn. Tributes were arranged. This time, I had little doubt that the Lone Islands would remain quiet. Without Narnia's protection and support, the nobles would butcher the burghers with the same zeal that they'd butchered the witches.

…And that was the final irony. The merchants would never possess the power to launch extermination campaigns on the scale that Fyren had attempted. When the dust had finally cleared from Fyren's massacres, the Lone Islanders breathed freer air than their fathers and grandfathers had. I wondered for a moment whether the Pevensies' successors would regret the change. Memories of liberty do not fade easily; once released, cattle are hard to rein in. And Witchcraft thrives in free air.

In any case, Fyren's death had finished off the House of Orry. Fyren's body had been burned to ash, and the remains dumped into an unmarked grave. Lucy had forbidden anyone from touching it. They had levered it onto the pyre with wooden poles.

Edmund was in no state to appreciate his triumph.

Edmund's siblings had placed him in a smallish room, but it was well-lit and ventilated. A large window provided fresh air from the sea. Oddly for Narrowhaven, its carpenters had laid its floorboards in a uniform pattern, so that the edges of the boards formed perfect crosses where they met.

The Just King groaned in his sleep. Sometimes, it was soft. Generally, it was not. Sweat ran down his face and dripped from his hair until it created burgundy patches on the blood-colored sheets. He never opened his eyes. A chandelier hung over his bed. Each arm was a brass centipede, clutching a candle in its mouth. I checked it for black magic, but found none.

Susan slipped in every morning before dawn, long before the rest of the household woke up. She would move on tiptoes, head slightly bowed, and lay an orange on a small desk by his window sill. She would wait for an hour or two afterward by his bedside, as if she could will him to wake up and take it.

She needn't have bothered. The Just King never moved from his bed, unless you counted the time he fell out of it during a particularly painful night. And so, during each of her morning visits, Susan would remove the orange from the previous day before it spoiled.

This continued for a while.

A mirror hung from the wall above Edmund's bed. It had a convex surface, and its frame had ten ridges like lashes around an eye. Susan saw my reflection in it once. She started, but did not say anything. That night, though, Edmund's chief of intelligence fluttered under the window sill and hung there until Susan resumed her morning vigil. Edmund remained under Percival's watch thereafter.

I, too, watched him.

Not that I was the worst. Iaida hung around the bed with revolting diligence, like a dog waiting for its master to come home. She watched him breathe in and out, and wrung her hands whenever his lungs convulsed in pain.

My mother was less enthusiastic about her rescuer. She ran her hand along the bed's sheets before drawing back as if she'd touched something foul.

"What?" Iaida said.

Edmund gasped and arched his back before falling into unconsciousness again. His legs shivered, which loosened the poultice of ground henbane from his legs. Probably just as well.

My mother smiled – a rueful sort of smile, as if appreciating a joke in bad taste and not really feeling ashamed about it.

"Just like my old room…don't you think, Jadis?"

It took me a moment to see the implication. Iaida, though, had always been quicker on the uptake. And why not? She'd been the favorite, after all.

My sister's voice came out fast and shrill. She rubbed her hands across the top of her head. You'll laugh at me, perhaps, but I felt a momentary thrill of pleasure when her frizzy hair didn't fall out at her touch.

"No!" she said. "No, no…He's not going to—"

"Of course not!" I snapped.

My mother looked at me oddly for a moment. She raised an eyebrow, and I found myself glaring back at her. She laughed.

"Still…" she said. "Wouldn't hurt to read a final blessing over him anyway, would it, Jadis?"

"Bite your tongue, Mother."

She took a quick breath. Her voice deepened – changing in an instant from teasing to low and dangerous. The smile remained, though.

"You wouldn't _dare_ speak to me like that when—"

"And you wouldn't speak to me at all!" I shouted. "Where WERE you? Well? When Linshiol took me to make the Pact, where—I…where…"

I stopped and forced my hands to unclench. Smooth. Easy. I tightened my back and stomach until the shaking stopped. My mother had taken a step back, her mouth half-open as if she wanted to say something. I didn't give her the chance.

"…Perhaps we should call it even, hmm?" I finished.

She nodded, and straightened a wrinkle in her robe. We didn't talk for a while after that.

I wiped my eyes, just in case.

* * *

My mother took my sister out of the room shortly after our little spat. They didn't return for days. Iaida objected, stridently. I did not.

Too bad for my sister. She would have liked to watch the Just King's condition slowly improve. As it was, I was the only member of my family who saw it.

Edmund breathed in, out, and in again. Regular. Relaxing. His doctors had arranged mashed laurel leaves on his stomach that rose and fell with each breath. He was so very thin. I'd observed him for long enough before to realize how little fat his body carried, but his muscles were beginning to atrophy as well.

It was late evening when Lucy entered the room. Percy had not yet arrived, and the maids were gone for the night. I perked up a bit. During the worst days, the Valiant Queen had only managed to stay in the room long enough to give Edmund a daily draught of her elixir and clean Tash's foulness from his skin. She'd always scrubbed her hands afterward with pumice until they were red. She would leave quickly after that.

Not tonight, though.

"You did this," she said.

Over time, I'd become accustomed to people speaking as if I wasn't there. It took me a moment to realize that she was addressing me. It would have taken longer, except that she was looking directly at me.

"Actually, Lucy dear—"

She held her hands to the sides of her head.

"Enough!" she screamed. "_You_ did this to him! Tash, Fyren…It doesn't matter who put the finishing touches on. If I hadn't…"

The Valiant Queen pursed her lips, letting her words trail off. She gave me a look of hatred that I wouldn't have expected from the youngest Pevensie – tears in her eyes, her hands bunched into little fists at her side. Laughable, almost. I shrugged.

"If you say so," I said.

And then the rest of her words hit me. "If she hadn't"…what?

…_Oh._

_Oh, my._

_Ha! Hahahaha!_

As much as I tried to keep it casual, I couldn't suppress a note of glee in my voice.

"Perhaps I misjudged you, Lucy."

"What?"

I felt my grin becoming broader as I grabbed Lucy's chin and pulled her closer. For a split second, I felt her tense in my hands, and her eyes widen. It was amusing to watch her twist her face into anger to mask her fear. Wasted effort. I noticed her flinch every time she felt my breath on her face.

"_Clever_ girl, aren't you?" I said.

"How _dare_ you—"

She pulled back. I gripped her hair and pinned her in place.

"Fyren wasn't the type of person to resort to witchcraft…was he, Lucy?" I said.

Lucy said nothing.

"No…I think not," I said. "And you _knew_ his mother was a witch, didn't you?"

Still no answer. She just glared at me through her tears, jaw clenched. I brushed my fingernails across her cheek and put my lips to her ear

"So I ask myself," I whispered. "Why would little Lucy allow Fyren to see his mother, hmm? Why would she allow Fyren - who would _never_ use witchcraft - to meet a woman whose Sisterhood he'd just exterminated?"

Marvelous. Really, what were the odds that the family had _three_ conscience-tortured pragmatists? She was trembling now.

"Let's put the pieces together, shall we, Lucy dear? You knew that Fyren's mother was a witch. If you're remotely as clever as your brother, you probably also realized that she didn't want her son to succeed to the throne unless he was married to Susan…which seemed rather unlikely if he killed Edmund."

She took a deep breath, and the trembling subsided.

"And you only just figured this out?" she said.

"…Eh?"

Lucy shrugged her shoulders and pushed my hand away. She looked directly into my eyes now. Her voice grew calm – _too_ calm, almost mechanical, as if she was forcing it.

"Think about it," she said. "We're only staying in Narnia for another year. Fyren's different. Even if he didn't marry Susan, he'd still maintain his grip on the Lone Islands. And without Susan or the need for Narnian goodwill to restrain him…"

"…Farewell, Tash worshippers," I finished.

Well…This was something else again, wasn't it? I ran my hand along a shelf of leech-books that Edmund's physicians had left behind for the next morning. The leather bindings rubbed roughly on my palm.

Perhaps Edmund had spoiled me: a terrified young man tied to a king's throne in a world that wasn't his own. Ruthlessness and self-loathing had rubbed shoulders uneasily in the Just King's psyche. Part of his charm, you might say.

Lucy, though…I couldn't taste the sweet tang of guilt from this one. Anger, yes. Anguish for her brother, definitely. Whenever he'd cried out, I'd seen her own face twist with pain. Cold calculation...

I let go of her cheek.

"You forbade anyone from touching Fyren's body," I said. "You…Ahaha! You knew his own mother killed him, didn't you? You _hoped_ she would kill him when you allowed her to visit him. _That's_ why you permitted-"

"There's probably a cursed bone or something hidden in his clothing," she said. "I thought it was better for all involved if they just chalked it up to Aslan's miracle and left it at that."

I wanted to laugh, but it would have sounded too nervous for my tastes.

Edmund groaned. His hand knocked one of the therapeutic gems off the bed. It rolled on the floor with a _dr-r-r-r-t-t-t_ until Lucy snatched it up and fussily replaced it.

"…Well done, little Queen," I said.

Yet it all seemed oddly unsatisfying, somehow...

I gently took Lucy's hand in mine, and twisted my voice until it became soft and concerned, with just a hint of earnestness.

"But…but Lucy," I said. "How are you going to _live_ with yourself after what you've just done…?"

There was no wince, no lowering of the eyes that I would have seen from Edmund. Her features barely moved at all. Lucy stood up to her full height, and though she barely reached my shoulder, I found myself taking a step back.

"You've seen Earth?" she said.

I nodded.

"The others grew up there, you know," she said. "In England. The English love their children very much indeed. They tuck them in at night to keep the bogles away."

Lucy sighed. It seemed almost sad, except that she still held my gaze.

"…My brothers and sister are English," she said. "I'm Narnian."

Looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight, I really shouldn't have pushed the Valiant Queen any further. Edmund had been unavailable for quite some time, though, and I was getting restless. Anyway, I'd crossed that line a while ago.

I raised an eyebrow, and grinned.

"Oh?" I said. "Is that so, little princess?"

"Queen," she said.

I chuckled, and brushed her hair back from her eyes. I had to lean down to meet her glare.

"Ah, yes," I said. "I keep forgetting….Although most of the _queens_ I've met had their heads a bit higher off the ground. I usually fixed that."

"Then I'd better remind you, hadn't I?" she said.

This was getting good…

"Oh, by all means, Miss Pevensie" I said. "_Remind_ me."

"You know about Aslan's gift to his Line?" she said. "You didn't _actually_ believe that I was oblivious to the privileges my blood carries? That Aslan's Selected have magic of their own..."

I felt a chill down my spine before I realized why.

"Wait, what are you—"

"May your spirit wander alone," she said.

"W-what?"

"May your spirit wander alone," she repeated. "May every crowded room seem empty, and every companion's kiss taste like ashes in your mouth. May you wander until the last tree withers, and the stars go out, and the Narnian sun sets for the last time."

"Wait, just—"

"May you wander until Tash and Aslan die in each other's embrace at the Last Battle," Lucy intoned. "Each coiled around the other, and the Lion's Song ends, and the last living thing in Narnia becomes silent."

"Enough!" I shouted. "You don't understand what you're—"

"…And when a great cry goes up in the Wood Between the Worlds for its fallen son… when the news reaches the unlighted chamber beyond time, which moves to the music of accursed flutes and the monotonous beat of drums…"

"Stop!"

"…When they address him by the name no lips dare speak aloud, and tell him that Aslan is dead…when the Chaos at the center of eternity grieves for his child…you will wander still."

I felt something that I can't quite explain as the curse took hold. A sudden heaviness, as if a spectral child had crawled onto my back and clung to it. I stumbled backward.

"Consider that payment," Lucy said.

I shook my head, but the cold remained. The light was fading from the room.

"For...for what...?" I mumbled.

"For what you've done to my brother," she said.

Lucy gave me a bitter smile, but her voice…it had a chirping quality, offhand, like a little girl reminding a parent of some trifle or other.

"Speaking of whom…" she said. "I fancy Edmund will want to see you when he gets up. Be sure you're available, won't you?"

Her face did not look like a little girl's anymore. Grim. Satisfied. The Valiant Queen nodded once, and left.

Edmund was still asleep. I sat alone in the gathering darkness. Lucy's footsteps kept me company as they padded down the hall, but when she turned a corner, they vanished with her.

I felt something else.

"She knows," I said. "You told her?"

A tail swished in the shadows.

"More or less. She knows enough."

"And the others?" I said.

"Need you ask, Witch?"

I frowned.

"No," I said. "I suppose not."

I heard a deep-throated rumble. The tapestries rustled. The woven picture of a king and his attendants rustled with them, as if they were speaking to each other. The king nodded to his falconer, while the falcon flapped its wings with the undulating fabric.

"I need hardly remind you that the Deep Magic prohibits you from telling Edmund anything about me—"

"What makes you think I would care enough?" I said.

Soft thrumming – like purring, only far louder.

"You were never as good a liar as you think you are, Witch."

"And you were never anything but child playing at war," I snapped. "You said it yourself, didn't you? I can't tell him. The Deep Magic forbids it."

He stretched. Shadows flowed through the knots in his back and legs like water running down a length of rope.

"Well, then…" he said.

"They aren't toys," I said.

He flicked one of his whiskers with a claw. His reply came in that soft, baritone voice that would have seemed like a wise old man's, if I hadn't known better.

"Do you speak for Edmund, or yourself, Daughter of Charn?" he said.

"What's the difference?"

The deep rumbled purring came again, more intensely than before. His lips curled into something like a smile. It revealed his fangs.

"None," he said. "I intend to 'play' - if you _must_ insist on thinking about it that way - with both of you as I like. It's for his own good...and yours too, really."

"You're no different from Tash. You know that?"

"Good night, Witch."

The vision blurred and became empty as the last traces of my visitor melted into the wall.

And then I was truly alone.

* * *

Edmund's fever broke the next morning.


	24. Chapter 23: Edmund

**Chapter 23: Edmund**

We sat in a courtyard, at the head of one table among dozens.

Our cooks had outdone themselves that night. Narnians don't serve their meals like the English do. There were no "courses", as we use the term. Instead, the servants laid out plates of fruit, meat, fish, and pastries almost indiscriminately, so that the diners could sample each in turn. The cooks had slathered most of it with the spicy seasonings and sauces that Narnians favored. Ginger, cinnamon, vinegar, pepper, and honey intermixed with one another, paying little heed to whether a dish was supposed to be hot, acidic or sweet.

…And colorful. I remember in particular a yellow-and-red lion that the Naiads had created from saffron and sandalwood coloring.

Jadis had practically curled herself around me. As usual, she had not made herself known to the partygoers who walked through her without a second's hesitation. For this, I was grateful.

"Careful, Edmund," she said. "You may even start to enjoy yourself…"

A few of the dishes careened from "exotic" into just plain odd. Servants brought out a roasted peacock whose skin and feathers had been replaced so that it looked almost alive. The centaurs presented Susan with an entire plate of "glazed pilgrims": eels with boiled heads, roasted bodies, and fried tails. The fauns went one better when they brought in a roast pig stuffed with a roast chicken, which was in turn stuffed with roasted pine nuts.

(It was delicious, by the way).

As plates of mutton, pork, rabbit and venison kept coming, I started worrying about the expense. Even at the best of times, Susan's parties could strain the exchequer to its breaking point. The year before, the guests at her Easter feast – all five thousand of them – had consumed eleven thousand eggs, sixty thousand loaves of bread, a hundred boars, and more chickens than I cared to dwell upon at the moment. If anything, this turnout seemed larger. When I saw that Susan had furnished the head tables with glass cups instead of wood, I nearly gagged on my herring pie.

Shadows from the candles danced across the guests' faces as they gossiped and laughed. The flames' flickering reflected in the silver candlesticks that held them.

I looked at my siblings. Susan had already assumed that mask of girlish energy that she wore at every party, blasting her guests with cheerfulness as if from a fire hose. Peter had company: some female representative from Telmar, who shared his plate and wore ribbons in her hair. The two drank from the same glass.

Jadis smiled, stirring my wine with her finger. Her eyelids drooped a bit as she graced me with a lazy smile.

"And who would _you_ invite to share your drink, hmmm Edmund?" she said.

I didn't reply.

Lucy, for her part, seemed to be enjoying a dish with chicken boiled in wine and topped with fried almonds. She chatted with Tumnus, who scratched his forehead with a look of perplexity. When his wife slapped the back of his head lightly and scolded him, I reflected that at least he didn't blow on his soup or wipe his mouth on the tablecloth anymore.

"…Who knows, little king? I might even be willing, if you asked me nicely."

Squires of all species trotted among the guests, offering perfumed napkins and the occasional treat. My own trencher had become soaked with juice. I tossed it to the dogs and got another. The feast continued. Lamprey heaped upon capon heaped upon spiced porpoise.

When Jadis muttered something about me ruining my figure, I snatched a piece of sweetmeat from the silver nef and popped it in my mouth with a flourish. She wrinkled her nose.

…And then, they brought out the "subtlety".

It's a dessert, if you're curious. Dough, marzipan, that sort of thing. A good chef can shape it into anything he wants: a castle, or a dragon, or a king. A pair of kings, perhaps.

Dueling kings.

I set down my food and headed for the fresh air of the garden. Shame, really; it had been going so well until then.

Oh, I said my goodbyes first, although the guests stared a bit. Some of the ceremony was inevitable: the dwarves offered me a gold ewer filled with perfumed water, and I washed my hands while everyone rose to their feet. The jester capered about, rubbing his stomach and groaning in a passable imitation of my voice that "poor King Edmund" had eaten too much.

Jadis did not follow me.

I smiled and bid an early farewell before starting across the dewy lawn. Not that it mattered that much anyway – the feast would go on for days, and I'd find myself at the head table more than once in the upcoming week whether I liked it or not.

* * *

I felt mist on my face. My feet grew moist, though the grass itself barely reached past my ankle. Our gardeners had kept it short, killing the weeds anew every year with boiling water before laying out turf. For the rest of the year, they made do with scythes.

Long before I reached the garden, I heard the troubadours' song resume, and the feast begin anew.

Just as well.

The music stopped for a moment. I heard the creak of hundreds of seats being pushed back, as if everyone had stood up. I kept walking. They pushed forward again…

Probably a dance.

"Ed?"

I turned rather quickly. Looking back on it, Susan must have startled me more than I'd thought.

My sister seemed to be waiting for something. The forced cheerfulness in her voice had vanished now, replaced by an equally forced calm. She fiddled with her braids. Copper beads clicked.

"I'm…I'm so sorry, Ed. I didn't know about the—"

"S'alright," I said. "I know you wouldn't have..."

I shrugged. She exhaled.

Susan's gaze rose from my chest until she met my eyes. The sides of her mouth twitched slightly, as if she was contemplating a joke that she hadn't yet spoken aloud. And then Susan put her hands on her hips, puffed out her cheeks, and scrunched her face into an exaggerated scowl. Her equally exaggerated (and very unQueenly) "harrumph" completed the effect. At first, she managed not to smile.

"Edmund James _Pevensie_," she said. "If you don't cease gallivanting about like some maudlin version of Caesar's ghost-"

"Heh…"

"Then I shall be—ahem…"

"Heh, heh, heh…"

"To be forced—aha! Hah…"

I admit that that I cracked first.

And how. I bent over laughing like I hadn't laughed since before we'd been sent away to the Professor's house. Before the Blitz.

In my somber moods, I've attributed that moment to the months of bloodshed, the massacres, the trials…or perhaps the healing potion that had purged my body, leaving it feeling new and unfamiliar for the second time in my rather short life.

…And that was really the point, wasn't it? Life _was_ short. So why not enjoy its compensations?

If I'd started the torrent, though, Susan wasn't far behind. The Gentle Queen hid her mouth behind her sleeve at first, but she pretty much gave up the ghost after she snorted with a suppressed laugh. The mask shivered to pieces. For a moment I saw my sister again, giggling like a schoolgirl. We must have both leaned on the wall for support as we cackled, since I found myself touching her shoulder, and she mine.

She flinched a little. I stopped laughing.

"Ed…"

"Eh?"

"When I…when I offered Fyren—"

"You tried to save my life," I said.

She pursed her lips and turned to me, a little stiffly.

"I suppose…well," she said. "It's like…whatever it is that you do…You protect us. I—"

She sighed.

"…Well, I couldn't, ah, leave my favorite brother in the lurch, could I?" she finished.

A concession to triviality. I allowed it.

Susan straightened a lock of my hair and smiled up at me. I noticed for the first time that I must have grown a bit since we'd set off for the Islands. She seemed smaller than I remembered.

"Don't you have a party to attend?" I said.

Her voice was softer now, though the smile remained.

"…Something as superficial as all that?" she said. "Surely His Majesty jests."

I dipped my head, acknowledging the point. And then some.

"Trivial?" I said. "The only thing that's keeping this lunatic asylum from falling apart? Surely _you_ jest, Queen Susan."

Susan tilted her head.

"Ed, what do you—"

"Su."

She stopped talking. Her back curled slightly as she sank back into the wall.

"I brought gunpowder to Narnia," I said. "You brought civilization. Remember that."

Susan opened her mouth, but she didn't say anything for a moment. I squeezed her hand.

"I need to go," I said. "Get some air. We'll talk later."

"T-talk…Yes…"

I bowed and headed for the garden. Behind me, I thought I heard a rather unQueenly sniffle. She wasn't the only one.

I looked back.

As I saw Susan that night, leaning against the wall, her green dress coiled around her legs as she clasped her arms in front of her, I promised myself something.

I'd heard enough from Jadis, especially in the last week, to know what would happen to us. I also remembered the nightmares from my fever, where my siblings and I sat face-to-face as the shadows out the train's window passed us. A hiss of steam. The passengers' shrieks. Peter looking around wildly, even as he felt the magic that would summon us to Narnia one last time. Lucy, the calm at the center of the storm, a small smile on her face.

"_We're coming home_," she whispered.

Aslan could take me for all I cared. Peter would see it as a duty; his last duty as King of Narnia. He would leap into the Lion's arms with the same blind enthusiasm he showed when he'd jump over a rampart or take an opponent to pieces with his greatsword. As for Lucy, I couldn't stop her if I wanted to.

One way or another, though, I would keep Susan off that train.

* * *

I don't suppose you could call it a pleasure garden, exactly. Narnia's humans were a pragmatic lot; I doubt that they'd set aside anything for purely aesthetic reasons, and our garden was no exception. We grew sage, basil, and almond trees along with our lilies, and none of the plants suffered for it.

Admittedly, it appealed to me for a different reason: in contrast to the communalism that every other piece of Narnian architecture forced down my throat, the garden offered real privacy. It had a high stone wall, secured with mortar so that no gaps remained. Willows and poplar trees added to the coziness. Vines cut into towers trailed along the walls.

"You're late, Edmund."

Jadis emerged from one of the interior walls. Without her pallor, I wouldn't have seen her until she'd come much closer; she wore a black dress without further adornment. Her hair fell across her shoulders in braids, in the manner of younger Charnian ladies. It was simple, and gave her a restrained appearance that I couldn't quite puzzle out.

"Ah," I said. "So I am."

I saw two other figures a short distance away. The taller of the two stood still. The other walked along the lead edge of a flower bed, her arms out like a tightrope walker. She ran her shoe along a woven willow fence. It made a dry _tc-tc-tc-tc-tc-tc-tc_ as it flicked the cords one by one.

She saw me, and froze.

The pause lasted only a few seconds. The girl inched toward me. When she stepped into the light, I saw a face rather like Jadis's. The effect was softer, though; her cheeks carried a little more fat, her nose was a bit larger, her lips a bit fuller, her hair curly. She wore a dress with painted _shlerif _flowers that I recognized from my trip to Charn. Perhaps that's what stalled my memory for a split second: I had seen her in Jadis's visions, but only in her white funerary robes.

When she came within a few feet of me, she held out her hands. They had no gold rings or bracelets. No finery to wear to the Charnian Land of the Dead. Her eyes glistened with what I could only assume were tears.

"Um…hello," I said. "You must be Iaid—"

She stopped any further speculation by running the last few feet and nearly tackling me with a hug. I felt my shirt become wet as she alternately sobbed and laughed into my chest. She clung like a limpet, too – not that I minded. I found myself remembering the time that Lucy had become lost in the subway, and how she'd hugged me when I finally found her. I patted the girl on the head, which seemed to redouble both her tears and her laughter.

"_Ytensinor pi-Dalvikri_," she kept saying. "_Ytensinor Pi-Dalvikri! Phri eliNn tugarthalekvi!_"

Jadis watched the proceedings with an expression I couldn't quite place. She finally shrugged, and held out her palms in a helpless sort of gesture.

"It's…ah…Charnian," Jadis said. "It means—"

I smiled. A pot of gillyflowers wobbled a few feet away; Iaida had bumped it in her dash toward me.

"I think I got it, thanks."

The air was slightly cool that night, but not chilled – just crisp enough to be fresh, and no wind to make it bite. I saw myself in one of the bits of mirror-glass embedded in the concave garden walls. During daytime, they would trap the sun's rays for our fruit trees. That night, they glittered with the moonlight.

The older of the two visitors remained in the shadows. She, too, resembled the woman who'd haunted my nightmares for almost a year now. Almost the same age, in fact. She'd died early enough that the two could have been sisters.

She gave me a curt nod. I returned it.

Like most good things, Iaida did not stay with me forever. We exchanged a word or two through Jadis, but Iaida's mother pulled her away before we could get far beyond initial introductions. I suppose that a Charnian queen can only tolerate ersatz monarchs around her children within certain limits.

Jadis ignored her.

This didn't go over well. They exchanged a few particularly guttural words in Charnian, and Jadis's mother left with Iaida soon afterward. The girl flashed me a surreptitious smile as she was lead away. I returned it with a wave.

Two of us left, then.

* * *

I found myself walking through the garden's maze with Jadis. Susan had commissioned it for Peter's birthday, years ago. The gnomes had taken especial pleasure in crafting a network of walls from turf, thyme, and hyssop. It wouldn't have passed muster in the castle gardens of our world. Narnian mazes were barely knee-high, and far less frustrating for it.

(I once mentioned the tall mazes from Earth to our landscaper, a wrinkled dwarf with curly white hair and an inexhaustible store of four-letter words. He grunted, and replied that Earth's humans must be foolish indeed to pay for the privilege of losing themselves in their own gardens. )

Note, however, that "far less frustrating" is a relative term. Especially in the dark.

"Hang on, I think we turn left from here…"

Jadis rolled her eyes and jabbed a finger toward the path ahead.

"The exit's that way," she said.

"It's my garden," I said. "I've walked it before."

"I'm taller," she said.

"Rub it in, why don't you?"

Normally, she would have had a point. In this light, though, I doubted that she could see much farther than I could anyway. When Jadis noticed me bouncing on my toes, she crossed her arms and glared at me.

"And just _what_ are you doing?"

"We could jump it," I said.

I couldn't be sure, but I would swear that Jadis's eyebrow twitched. I held up my hands to forestall the inevitable.

"Look," I said. "It's just a few feet…"

"I'm wearing a dress, Edmund."

In the end, Jadis won. We took her route, and ended up on the longest garden stroll of my life. In retrospect, I can't say I minded much. The moon peered at us through the branches of interwoven trees. On our right, we passed a dining platform built on the branches of a linden tree. Beyond that, we could see black little holes where Peter's Dwarven engineers had dug artificial caves into the hills. I could barely make out the stone knotwork around the doors. A hydraulic statue of a wood nymph sprayed Jadis with water before she had the chance to dematerialize. She was not amused.

More to the point, we spoke for a long time.

Earth, Charn, our families, our encounter during Narnia's civil war, the future. Nothing profound. We'd ripped most of the "profound" information from one another's minds during our long attunement sessions anyway. It hadn't told us much.

Hours must have passed.

"So…" Jadis said at last.

"So," I replied.

We'd walked through the last archway of vines several minutes ago. A pond lay before us. Two fish flicked through the water, locking jaws for a moment. They twisted, and the water above them _plipped_ gently with their struggle. One disengaged; the other darted after him. Jadis spread her dress out on the turf knoll and sat down.

"Does it…bother you, I wonder?"

"What?" I said.

Jadis gave me a bitter smile.

"You know what I intend to do," she said.

"I had hoped you wouldn't," I said.

"But you knew anyway."

"Yes."

Another plague on the world that had adopted me. More nightmares in longships pouring in from the North. Another age when wolfpacks picked the forests clean. Another king sacrificed, perhaps, as the last of Frank's line had been. Conquest upon futile conquest, each repulsed like the one before…until the end. The game would return to its shelf when the master died. The Lion would tear his own world apart in his death throes. Even if Jadis carved a kingdom from the chaos she'd create, she knew as well as I did that she couldn't keep it. She'd still try.

"You want to know if I regret what I've done," I said. "Saving you."

Jadis rubbed her neck when I said it. She watched the fish again. Black shapes in dark water, like shadows. The rough fibers of my tunic prickled my arms more than usual.

"I suppose you could put it that way," she said.

"Then yes," I said. "I do regret it."

Jadis's head snapped up, her lips thin. When she saw my face, though, the expression softened.

"...But you would do it again," she said.

I laughed, though I wasn't sure why. Jadis turned her eyes to the aftermath of Susan's party.

A few hundred feet away, a dance had begun. A bonfire burned. A few of the braver young men leaped through the flames. One of them burned his clothes. He jumped into the spring nearby before anything serious happened. Revelers danced around the maypole, and the fire etched their silhouettes into the air.

"I'd do it again a heartbeat," I said. "...Unfortunately."

Jadis laughed softly, and then was silent for a while.

"The sixth hour of the second day of Sehligar," she said.

"What?"

She smiled faintly, but kept her eyes on the dance.

"My birth date," she said.

It took a moment for the significance to sink in.

"Er…" I said.

Jadis quirked an eyebrow and watched me quietly as she waited.

"Hem…Twenty-second of December," I said. "1930. Don't know the hour. Sorry."

Jadis finally turned and looked at me. Her smile remained, though it was hard to tell in distant the firelight's shadows. She held out a hand.

"Well met, Edmund Pevensie."

I took it and kissed it lightly.

"Well met, Queen of Charn."

Her hand stayed in mine for only a moment, and then withdrew. Her smile disappeared, and she sighed.

"You have a dance to join," she said.

"I suppose I do."

I got up and headed for the bonfire.

Ten steps.

Fifteen.

Twenty…

I looked back, and saw a girl of about my age waiting by the pool. She was pale, but not as pale as she had become after she'd bitten the Apple. Her legs were thin and awkwardly crossed. Her hair fell across her shoulders in two braids. She waved at me.

Jadis never looked that young again. Not for me, at least.

Oh, I saw her later. I was there when she stirred her own schemes into that mess with Caspian, and I met her again after she'd donned the green kirtle and tied Rilian down to her silver chair. Her charms hadn't faded in the interim. She was still achingly beautiful, and gave me a knowing grin when she caught me staring.

But she had looked so very, very tired.

That was later, of course. For now, Jadis motioned for me to go. Before I turned back to the revelers, though, I saw Iaida curl up beside her sister with a golden cup and ball. It arced through the air until the string yanked it back down, where it clattered against the cup. Both girls laughed. Their hands entwined.

They vanished. I kept walking.

In the courtyard, Lucy whirled around the maypole. Her bare feet kicked drops of dew from the grass. Susan joined her, locking arm in arm as both spun on the end of the rope. Susan's hair was missing its braids; it hung free and loose under a garland of flowers. Susan flashed me a smile and held out her hand.

Her lips moved silently.

"Come on, Ed."

I shrugged, and joined the dance.

* * *

**Finis.**


	25. Author's Notes: First of Two

**Author Notes: First of Two**

Well…

I must say that I enjoyed writing this, and I hope that you all enjoyed reading it. Above all, I want to thank everyone for the feedback I received. _Chanson de Geste_ came out a much better story thanks to your critiques the last-minute edits that they inspired.

Since several reviewers mentioned that they had questions, I'm going to wait a little while to give everyone the chance to ask them. In a week or two, I'll post a longer author's note with answers, clarifications, and details that I left out of the story.

I can't guarantee comprehensiveness. Thanks in part to its two main characters, _Chanson de Geste_ is an ambiguous story. Although the Just King was a little more flexible than the White Witch, neither Edmund nor Jadis was a model of honesty, emotional or otherwise. Worse, both had points of view that could careen from "opinionated" into dogmatic, and their views did not always reconcile. Since I don't want to rip apart either character's account of the Lone Islands' succession crisis, I'll probably confine some of my "answers" to my own impressions. Take it as an informed opinion.

…After all, if we _really_ held 'canon' so sacred, what are we doing here?


	26. Author's Notes: Second of Two

First, my apologies for finishing these notes incredibly late. I completed most of it earlier, but my summer became insanely busy and I've only just received a short breather. If this author's notes section brings up further questions that you desperately need answered, I can certainly produce another chapter of additional notes. And I'll be a lot faster this time.

_**The Basis for This Story**_

Several reviewers called _Chanson de Geste_ a darkfic, and I suppose that it is to some degree. I didn't intend to add misery and darkness just for their own sake, though. Instead, I tried to imagine what Narnia would need to look like if it was actually the preindustrial land of magic that Lewis described.*

* * *

* Unless, of course, you believe that Aslan created Narnia as a kid-friendly playground where Edmund, Susan, Lucy, and Peter could grow into well-behaved English schoolchildren. The books actually support this theory in several places, so I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibility. It would also explain why humans still seem to "exist" in Narnia. Frank's descendants should have died out from the effects of inbreeding, and the Telmarines should have met the same fate since they were corsairs who probably didn't bring many women along. Perhaps the humans who greeted the Pevensies during the Golden Age weren't exactly real. But I digress.)

* * *

Medieval people lived with some unpleasant realities. They lacked proper medical care, so women often died in childbirth. Many of their children also died young, which partly accounts for the discrepancy between the "average" life expectancy then and now. Peruvian Quechua-speaking farmers still refuse to consider their children human until they can stand up for the first time. I have no doubt that Western European peasants had similar mental tricks to prevent themselves from caring as much about the early loss their children. Medieval parents were not particularly nurturing: the overwhelming majority of children raised before 1800 suffered from child abuse by modern standards, and infanticide could follow a poor harvest. If young adults survived all of this, they could look forward to abusive husbands (if female), drunken knife fights and _faida_ (if male), and the depredations of people who resided higher on the social food chain (both genders). Medieval stories betray a rather cruel outlook on life – abuse, violence, and maiming are often considered jokes.

Did Medieval people have non-morbid fun? Of course. They loved, danced, sang (as their preserved sheet music attests), drank (though not as much as their descendants did during the Gin Epidemic), watched mystery plays, etc. etc. Modern people have the same genes, after all – including the ones that allow us to smile. Medieval people could get along in the Middle Ages quite well, thank you very much. And they did.

I think that this nuance trips some revisionist historians up: they try to show how the Middle Ages weren't so horrible (Hey, look: Aquinas! _Roman de la Rose_! Beautiful illumination! More religious holidays than a modern government job! Serfdom…er…I mean, guaranteed employment!), but they forget that "horrible" depends a lot on your audience. Somebody who's performed hard labor on a farm with his eight siblings - four now deceased - and has suffered child abuse from age two might not mind a medieval world very much. If our hypothetical person is slightly better off and comes from a semi-urban area, he might look forward eagerly to an apprenticeship whose hours would give a modern investment banker pause. If he's bright and young enough to receive an education at one of the local schools, he might even write about his appreciation of birds' songs and hum "_tara tantara teino"_ slightly off key as he scribbles surprisingly sophisticated epistemology in bad Latin.

…But I don't think that four urban children from modern Britain would like it very much. _Chanson de Geste's _Edmund focused on the depressing parts of medieval life because that's what stood out to him. His co-narrator doesn't have the same excuse; Jadis was just being Jadis.

By and large, I think the terrible living conditions came from technological limitations rather than any innate cultural problems. As long as Aslan's Narnia is agrarian and preindustrial, it will suffer from the same social ills that afflict every agrarian, preindustrial civilization. And since it's medieval, it will probably suffer from a few that were innate to Northern Europe.

As for the witch trials: I think that the European witch-craze between roughly 1400 and 1600 is the most accurate depiction of the way a preindustrial civilization would react to "real" magic. The late-Medieval and Renaissance Europeans believed that magic could kill indirectly, in secret, and without leaving evidence. Its operations could blend into conventional causal chains: if a granary collapses on a group of villagers, it could have fallen due to (1) Termites eating the foundation, (2) Witchcraft, or (3) Witchcraft _causing_ termites to eat the foundation at the particular moment that the villagers chose to picnic under it. In a world with science, you can pick #1. In a world with magic, you can never be sure. So what's a regular person in a magic-haunted world to do? Probably something very similar to what the Renaissance Europeans actually did: create paranoid police-states in each village or town, complete with "witchfinders".

As for Aslan…

Well.

I tried to stay faithful to Aslan's canon characterization here. Unfortunately, the characters in _Chanson de Geste_ are no longer children, and they see Aslan through adult eyes. If Narnia was an adult series, Aslan would be closer to one of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones than a benevolent teddy bear with Liam Neeson's voice.

Consider:

- Exhibited questionable benevolence toward people. When it came down to Telmar versus cute fuzzy animals, he started killing humans.

- Let Narnia suffer winter for a hundred years for no apparent reason, allowed the Telmarines to invade for no apparent reason, allowed the Lady of the Green Kirtle to destroy Rilian's mind for no apparent reason, and allowed Rabadash's expedition to go off without a hitch just so that he could see Edmund's army get killed fighting them. When Calormen set up a "false Aslan" and invaded, Aslan could have cleared things up rather easily. Instead, he used it as an excuse to launch Doomsday. In general, Allows horrible things to happen, and then intervenes in inexplicably bizarre ways that cost a lot more human and animal lives than were necessary, just so that he can make a moral point. What moral point? See the entry about schoolchild morality further below.

- Used children to lead his armies, repeatedly. He dragged them out of their own world whenever he thought they needed to learn some moral lesson or other. In the end, he "rewarded" them by killing them all and sealing their souls in his own idea of a perfect world. This would be creepy enough, but remember that the people in Narnia who Aslan used to administer these lessons (by provoking their wars, etc.) were _also_ human.

- Clearly had no problem with killing, but seemed to prefer exotic punishments like transfiguration. When a group of humans in Calormen displeased him by behaving "wickedly", Aslan did Jadis's transformation-into-stone act one better: he changed Telmarine Calormenes into dumb beasts [see Lewis's author notes]. For good measure, Aslan also "laid waste" to the area. He did something similar to Rabadash in HHB, and I suspect that Eustace's transformation into a dragon was another of these. (Food for thought: When the Calormenes eat a stag or other wild animal, they're eating their own distant relatives…)

- Aslan's moral code isn't evil, but it is definitely alien. He cares enormously about other people acknowledging that he's right, and Aslan's ideas about proper behavior lack any sense of proportionality. He seems particularly obsessed with English schoolchildren's etiquette. Aslan chastises Lucy for choosing to listen to her friends' gossip, for instance, and bars Susan from her "reward" of dying with her siblings because Susan enjoyed parties and flirtation now and again…just like she had _as an adult_ in Narnia. By contrast, Alsan doesn't seem to mind when ten-year-olds kill on his orders, start wars, brawl in the streets, conduct plundering expeditions, or fight duels. Aravis could run away from an arranged marriage without any problem, even though her maid was beaten. Unfortunately for her, though, she didn't _mind_ that her maid was beaten. Aslan clawed her back in response. (Just to be clear – this was an eleven year old girl). Even adults were not immune, however. Rabadash got away with trying to invade Narnia and steal Susan by force, but Aslan turned him into a donkey when he said rude things about Narnia.

...

As to Jadis and Edmund, I'll leave that up to your interpretation. The text strongly suggests the following:

(1) Edmund was attracted to Jadis at some level, but wasn't too happy about it for most of the story.

(2) Jadis's only admission of regret – to the readers, anyway – comes when she dismissed Edmund after he saved her from Tash. The admission counts for something; this is a woman who denied feeling guilty about massacring her entire family. By her standards, she also seems quite grateful that Edmund saved her mother and sister.

(3) Jadis obviously finds Edmund interesting at some level, if only because she has a connoisseur's taste for the political schemes he excels at.

(4) At the same time, though, Jadis clearly enjoyed making Edmund miserable, even after he saved her. She called Edmund's vulnerability to guilt and emotional pain "part of his charm", and exploited it whenever she could.

…Beyond that, you're on your own. You could interpret Jadis's relationship with Edmund as a (very) creepy romance, a platonic mutual appreciation between two intellectual equals, a reluctant partnership born of Tash's own schemes, or even a one-sided manipulation where Jadis used her hold on Edmund to get what she wanted before she left. The text supports all of them, to varying degrees.

I have my own opinion, of course.

_**Final, Final Notes**_

Yes, the Lady of the Green Kirtle was Jadis. As you can probably guess, this AU differs from canon at several points, and one of them was Edmund's involvement in the Rilian incident. Eustace's encounter with Jadis was quite interesting for both parties.

If I have time, I'll write it.


End file.
